


Resurrection Men

by jibrailis



Category: Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Regency, Community: fandom_aid, Hurt/Comfort, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 22:17:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5945158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jibrailis/pseuds/jibrailis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“‘m not <i>sweet</i>,” Eggsy sneered, “and my father was a tailor.”</p><p>“Your father was a Kingsman,” Hart said.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurrection Men

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nicolasechs](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicolasechs/gifts).



> for my darling nicolasechs with lots of love. ♥♥ thank you for being so patient and generous, and for no doubt being understanding about my entire thought process when writing this fic, which was, what if there were BEES??? but there actually weren't very many bees in the end.

The beginning of the most revelatory journey of Eggsy’s life, the catalyst of the events that would transform him from ne’er-do-well into a protector of England and defender of the crown, the very _genesis_ of what he would one day come to be, had him bent over on all fours and fucked behind a molly-house in Moorfields.

He was being swived so hard that he had to bite his lip bloody in order not to cry out. So hard that his knees were two pressure points of pain, scraping to and fro as he rocked his hips, trying to push his arse back onto the rough hard cock being slammed into him. 

His shaking thighs were slick with sweat beneath his roughspun breeches where they had been pushed just low enough so that he could be fucked properly, and sweat beaded the valley of his upper lip, the salt sting another small, glorious pain when it dripped into where he was biting down so helplessly. 

The man who was fucking him made no sound, which was sensible considering he was ploughing Eggsy in an alleyway. They had some illusory measure of privacy, hidden behind a flat of crates as they were, but even so: noise would not have been welcome. 

So Eggsy kept his pleasure to himself, though it was a battle the entire length through; the man’s cock was pushing into him with devastating strength, and it was so delicious that he thought he might lose his mind and sob out anyway, all whimpers and wails like a cat in heat, a pretty little whore ripe to be bounced around on some stranger’s cock.

He did not know the man’s name, had hardly even seen his face. The night-time darkness that hid them from view was the same shivering dark that made any of this possible; not even Eggsy went trawling for sodomy in broad daylight. Only when the sun went to bed and he had kissed his mother good-night did he skulk his way over to one of his favourite molly-houses, arrange himself against a wall, and make furtive eye contact with men who might like to fuck him, or be fucked. Eggsy did not care one way or another.

A fortnight ago it had been a different man, and fortnight before that, another. Eggsy remembered them only in slivers: there was the man who had had sailor’s callouses, another a cock that had curved to the right and made him want to scream. 

This man, the man pumping into him right now, he would remember for two details: how he had looked in his exquisitely tailored greatcoat with his porcelain-topped walking stick, like a creature from a fairy-tale, and how strong he was when he was forcing Eggsy to take his cock with every brutal thrust.

Eggsy opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. He reached his peak on a silent wail, breath punched out of his body as he dirtied the ground beneath him with his seed. He spurted for so long that his knees gave way, and only the man’s muscled arm around his torso caught him, lowered him almost gently as he shook and gasped. The man’s hips snapped against his arse a handful more times, and then Eggsy could feel him peaking as well, leaking hot and wet inside Eggsy’s body.

When he released Eggsy, Eggsy completed the journey his body had already started, and collapsed full length on the ground. He could hear his heartbeat drumming through his ears. “Christ Almighty,” he blasphemed, and the magnificent man with the devil’s own cock smiled quietly in the dark before bending down and leaving something beside Eggsy’ head. He turned his chin and saw it: a shining round crown.

It was still warm from the man’s hand when Eggsy touched it, and swore.

 

 

Mistaken for a prostitute. Oh but his father would have been proud of him now!

This small shame, however, would undoubtedly _not_ make the list that his Cousin David kept as tally. One Eggsy Unwin, the list went, responsible for a numerous array of sins, not the least of which included blackening the family name, embarrassing his poor mother, having naught but a sixpence to scratch with though he was one-and-twenty and must needs choose a profession, and finally, failing to show up on the mark for afternoon tea.

Afternoon tea was a law in Cousin David’s Mayfair house as firm as any as had ever been written on Moses’ tablets, but Eggsy treated it with the same whimsy as the proper tying of his cravats or the shining of his boots. He did this partly because he didn’t give a tuppence, and partly because it was a dreadful riot to see Cousin David’s eyes narrow and his fingers clench around his teacup when Eggsy sauntered in late, his shirt half-open and his breeches torn.

Cousin David’s wife, who on the first day they had met had said _Call me Cousin Lydia_ with a grimace that would not have been out of place on the skulls in the Paris catacombs, stiffened. “My dear Eggsy,” she said in drawling tones, “have you swapped places with the stablehands again?”

Eggsy liberated a slice of plum cake and stuffed it into his mouth. Between exaggerated chews, he said, “Well, you would certainly know a great deal about stablehands and wearing out the knees, would you not, dear cousin?”

His mother let out a gasp. The maid bent over pouring the tea smiled. Eggsy winked at her, and then turned back to admire the mottled redness in Cousin Lydia’s cheeks. However, it was Cousin David who, as usual, delivered the avenging blow. He moved closer to Michelle Unwin and said, “It is all in the blood, you know. As sick blood cannot be cured without being leeched, so it is from father to son. If only you had chosen more wisely, we would not have to suffer this indignity!”

Eggsy’s mother lifted her eyes to him. Eggsy, still chewing the plum cake, gazed back. I am sorry, he wanted to say. I didn’t mean to hurt _you_. But of course, his intentions mattered but a little. For not only was he was the sort of useless bastard who broke sodomy laws and talked back to his well-to-do relatives, he could not even protect his mother, who was the only soul in the world who cared for him, and who had once ignored her family’s wishes to marry a man well below her station simply because she had loved him. 

It was ill fortune that Eggsy’s father had proceeded to up and die when Eggsy was still wearing skeleton suits. His parents, God bless them and their romantic hearts, had never been much in the way of well-kept finances, and so three days after the funeral Michelle had packed up their house, lowered her eyes, and gone begging to her gentry relatives with tuppence in her pockets, asking for forgiveness.

The rules of the game were well-known: poor relations should be seen but not heard. Eggsy and Michelle sat the rest of tea in uncomfortable silence, Eggsy biting his nails to keep from making any objectionable remark as Cousin Lydia droned onwards about the bonnet she had ordered from the milliner — done in the latest Continental fashions, you know — and Cousin David spoke of the new pamphlet he had written about moral education for the poor, so that they did not bring England to collapse with their wanton recklessness, having too many babies and drinking too much gin when they should be properly brought to the light and grace of Jesus Christ. Eggsy always thought it a shame that Cousin David had been a firstborn son rather than a second; the Church had missed quite the hardy little soldier there.

Michelle was not a woman of strong constitution, and long periods of attentiveness wearied her. After the servants came to take the trays away, Eggsy offered her his arm and guided her to her bedroom. She spoke little, but sighed a bit and pressed her hand to his cheek at the door. His gut lurched with how cool her skin felt, at the shine of icy sweat on the flat of her palm.

“You must—” but she did not finish the sentence. “I am aweary, I think. I shall take a nap.”

“Come find me when you are awake,” he said. “We shall play cards together, or we can read together some of that daffodil poetry you like. Who was it again, Words-something, or however his name went?”

She smiled, and it was the same smile Eggsy saw in his own mirror every day. “You are a good son,” she said. “If only between the hours of three and five. The rest of it, I do not know, and I pray our cousins know not either.”

“I’ll be discreet, Mother.”

“You will try,” she said, and kissed him on the cheek. “Now let me sleep.”

The door closed quietly, and Eggsy could not help but think of another door closing, long ago, when the man who had brought the news of his father’s death had come to their house and drank their oolong. Michelle had wept then, while Eggsy played with his toy soldiers and smashed them together with such vehemence they broke. When they were in pieces he said to the stranger with the bad news, “I don’t believe you!”

He remembered that the man’s eyes had been distant but not unkind. He had said to Michelle, “You best make reparations with your family if you wish to continue comfortably,” and he had said to Eggsy, “Here, have this.” 

_This_ being a heavy golden coin he placed in Eggsy’s small palm. On one side was a rose. On the other side was a lily.

“What’s this for?” he had asked, as the man retrieved his coat and donned his hat, preparing to return to the streets where it had only just begun to snow. Eggsy had looked over to where his mother’s knees had given out, and she was lying with her face buried in the chaise longue’s arm, and Eggsy had felt in that moment the sort of encroaching rot that he later knew was the beginning of adulthood. “What’s this for?” he had asked again, angrily.

“To pay the boatman,” the man had said. “Be good, Mr. Unwin, and mayhap one day I shall have the pleasure of seeing you again.”

Well, Eggsy thought, he had broken _that_ promise with aplomb. For he had never met the man again, nor had he been particularly, ahem, good. With that grim thought, and Cousin David’s sneering words about blood and leeches still clanging in his ears, he decided it was time to find a tavern and get foxed. That, at least, was a wonderfully simple goal and mightily achievable.

 

 

If poor relations should be seen, then they should be seen for the marvelous charity their betters chose to extend to them, which was why, when Cousin David rode out to Viscount Rothschild’s weeklong country manor party at Marbury House, he took Eggsy and Michelle with him. 

The prospect of spending an elongated stretch of time among froggy-faced demi-monde and their fawning sycophants, not to mention the chits and their mamas prowling the marriage mart, chilled Eggsy down to the webbing of his toes. However, he comforted himself with the thought of pleasant things. The food would be excellent, the dogs agreeable, and he would see the hills of Devonshire, where the sky was like a vast shield laid protectively over the sweet-scented valleys of heather and honeysuckle.

When they arrived after a night’s journey, Eggsy conducted his usual habits in learning the shape of a new place: he asked downstairs. He had more in common with the help than any of Cousin David’s fine friends, and although the maids and the footmen were often suspicious of his cheerful questions, he worked hard to make them laugh. From them he learned the best place to find an ale in town, the rooms of Marbury House where fewest folk wandered, and which dogs of Viscount Rothschild’s hunting kennel were the friendliest and the fastest. 

J.B. was not one of them. Sleepy and affectionate, and too preoccupied with chewing everything in sight than chasing hares, Eggsy wasted no time in falling in love. “Pleased to meet you, J.B,” he crooned through the kennel bars. “‘m Eggsy. You and I are going to be such good friends. Look at you, you handsome beast.”

J.B. licked his fingers. Eggsy crowed in delight. He cast his eyes over to the kennel master, who was polishing a leather harness, and asked, in his sweetest tones, “The viscount won’t mind if I take him out to explore, will he? I promise I shall bring him back straightaways.”

“Do as you like, sir,” the kennel master shrugged. “His lordship don’t much mind the dogs when hunting season is out. Reckon he won’t even realize J.B. is his.”

“Now that’s a bloody shame,” Eggsy said. He rubbed J.B. behind his ears, where his fur was soft and milk pale. “Come on, that’s a good boy. What say you and I go roam the hillsides, howl at the moon, and frighten some villagers?”

J.D. barked happily. Eggsy grinned and off they went, loping through the grassy knolls. The further they tread from Marbury House, the lighter Eggsy felt, until they were so far away they would not hear the supper bell even if they wanted to. Eggsy’s lungs stung clean and fresh with new air. He was a city boy through and through, born white-knuckled and brawling in London town, but wandering through the tall rushes of Devonshire was like sauntering through the pages of a different story entirely, a mirrored fairy-world where bones of ancient kings from age-old battles fed the grass beneath his feet. It was difficult not to be swept up with the majesty of it. Eggsy could hardly help that he had such a tender, passionate soul, now could he?

“Cousin David won’t let me keep a dog in London, you know,” he murmured to J.B, burying his face in his fur. “David can go and knob himself up his arse.”

He thought of what he might have were he to come in possession of some money: a house of his own, dogs to sleep in his bed and at his feet, and no servants to ever bear instruction to watch his activities. A profession too, obviously, if he could nail one down to the board. So far, despite Cousin David’s pointed efforts to apprentice him to upstanding members of society, Eggsy had proven to be a lacklustre barrister, a dreadful accountant, a laughable scribe, and the less said about his brief time in the Church, the better. He still could not get the wine stains out of his trousers from sucking Father Laurence behind the altar.

“My cousins are looking for any reason to throw me out on the street,” he told J.B., who was trying to eat a sprig of cinquefoil from the dirt. “And then what shall I do? Likely become a whore for real.” He laughed, touching the crown in his pocket. “Well, perhaps if that fellow were looking for a mistress, I might not consider it a hardship. He was just like you, J.B. Big doggy cock!” He laughed even more wildly as J.B. barked in agreement.

It was dark by the time Eggsy brought J.B. back to the kennels. He peppered kisses over J.B’s face and promised to come see him again tomorrow, already making plans in his head to steal him. He would think of some way to convince Cousin David that a dog would be part of his moral betterment, he would, though nothing was coming to mind at the moment. Yawning, and shivering slightly from the damp chill, he entered the library to pour himself some brandy.

There was a clutch of men playing a round of faro in the library. Viscount Rothschild was among them. Cousin David, who did not approve of anything so sinful as gambling, was not, which made Eggsy even more liberal than usual with the amount of brandy he splashed into his glass. 

He did not much pay attention to the card-players, nor they him. In these sorts of situations everyone did their utmost to pretend Eggsy was invisible, and he was only too happy to comply. It was only when he leaned back against the wall to enjoy his evening spirits that he noticed the man to the viscount’s right was more than a little familiar, though in the candlelight his big, beautiful cock was only a suggestion beneath his tightly drawn breeches.

The man glanced at Eggsy. Eggsy lifted his glass in greetings and smirked. Then, when he was sure the man’s attention was fully on him, he licked his lips.

The man’s eyelashes flicked in amusement.

Eggsy made an exhibition of himself stretching against the wall, finishing his brandy, and sauntering out of the library. In the hallway he worried at a nail that had been clinging onto his thumb with leisurely indecision for the past several days. He glanced about every now and then until the library door opened. He made sure to straighten his spine and smile when the man in question walked out.

“Didn’t think I would be seeing you again,” Eggsy said. “It _is_ you, isn’t it?”

“You mean you are not certain?” the man asked, still amused.

“It was dark before, don’t blame me,” Eggsy said.

“I could blame you for a great many things, least of all that shameless display you made back there,” the man said. “Normally, you understand, I don’t make it a habit of speaking to men I’ve already, ah, known, but,” he extended his hand, “Harry Hart.”

“Eggsy Unwin, pleased to meet you,” Eggsy said, all smiles. 

“Your relation to Rothschild?”

“My cousin is a friend of a cousin’s friend, or something to that effect,” Eggsy said. “I don’t much keep track. Probably there was some inbreeding along the way. You?”

“Business partner,” Hart said.

“What sort of business?”

“Textiles,” Hart said, and he made no secret of his eyes as they looked over Eggsy’s body, a body that he had already possessed, so to speak, knees down and arse up in a back alley. Eggsy’s stomach squirmed but he did not let his expression falter. He looked Hart up and down in turn, pretending as if he knew what he was doing.

“Can see that,” he said. “Proper set of clothes you’ve got there. Must have cost a pretty penny.” He grinned. “Or a crown.”

“Ah.”

“Because I should tell you, I really am a cousin of a friend’s cousin, or some such, to Rothschild,” Eggsy said. “Not his mistress. Not his bit on the side. I don’t do that sort of business, if I were a business-minded sort of fellow at all.”

“Hush, you, lower your voice,” Hart said. He took Eggsy by the elbow and guided him to the unused drawing-room down the hallway, where the ladies had already vacated for a spot of pianoforte instead. His grip was as strong as Eggsy remembered, and Eggsy resisted the urge to hum happily as Hart closed the door behind them, kicking it slightly when it appeared to be stuck. “I apologize for my misunderstanding then,” Hart said. “I meant no offense.”

“No offense taken,” Eggsy replied. “‘s nice to know that I was so good you thought it was worth paying out of your pocket.”

“You must admit that you did give the impression of—” Hart stopped. “Never mind what impression you gave, it is hardly relevant now. I trust we will speak no more of this. I did not come to Rothschild’s with the intent of having my reputation ruined, and I suspect neither did you.”

“Consider it locked and forgotten,” Eggsy said. “If I went about exposing all the men I met on my knees, I would scarce have any new men to go down on my knees for, now would I? Oh, but I should give you your crown back. Don’t seem right, me keeping it.”

“Do what you like with the crown,” Hart said. He rubbed his knuckles against the soft satin of his waistcoat, thoughtful. “As for the rest, I must say our brief encounters have not presented your aptitude for discretion in the best light, Eggsy my dear.”

Eggsy’s pulse jumped into his throat like a flintlock. What a soppy blunderbuss he was, to be so pleased by a meaningless appellation, to be so charmed by his name traipsing across the tongue of a handsome man. But Hart was indeed handsome, if handsome was not a milquetoast word to describe a jaw that Eggsy wanted to lick sweat off of, a mouth that Eggsy wanted to bruise with his teeth, and a pair of large, sturdy hands that Eggsy wanted to rub against until those fingers were sticky with his seed. Behind the Moorfields molly-house he had taken only the most cursory of glances at Hart, but now that he could look his fill he was not sure he could _stop_ looking. 

Harry Hart, business partner of Viscount Rothschild, of the calm and deliberate voice, was the sort of expensive gentleman who would never spare Eggsy a glance if they had first crossed each other’s paths at Covent Garden or Bond Street, anywhere where sunlight peeled away shadow and shone brassy over Eggsy’s roughness and low origins.

Hart was a man with places to be. Eggsy was a boy who skulked in shadows and pelted carriages with pebbles. There had been an oil-burning lantern hanging over the molly-house that night, swinging the occasional beam into the distance while they fucked. The lantern had been slick with grease and riddled with rust spots, an ugly little thing that Eggsy had trained his eyes on at one point in order not to go cross-eyed with what Hart was doing with his fingers. Now, Eggsy had fine sympathy for it. He had had more in common with that rotten lantern than anyone else in the alleyway. There was no use in pretending otherwise. 

Which was why, instead of assuring Hart once more that he could in fact be discreet, could make use of his mother’s teachings and act a proper gentleman with elegant manners and a mouth sewn shut, he lifted his hands up to his waistcoat and thumbed his nipples instead.

If he had hoped to shock Hart, he would have had to concede defeat. Hart merely rolled his eyes and raised one aristocratic eyebrow, a dark flag against his otherwise pale skin. That was a marvelous trick, Eggsy thought. Perhaps he would need to practice it more himself in front of a mirror for the proper conceited effect.

“My God, you are quite the bit of muslin, aren’t you?” Hart said neatly. “However, one of the few privileges of practicing the Greek methods of love is that we are, by design, locked into mutual silence, and not to put too fine a point on it, but my word carries rather more weight than yours in this circle.” He clapped Eggsy on the shoulder. “Therefore good day, it was a pleasure to see you again in different circumstances, do try to not to embarrass yourself _too_ much in front of the other guests.”

“Only for you!” Eggsy called after Hart’s retreating back, and tried not memorize the sound of Hart’s chuckle before he closed the door behind him.

 

 

If Eggsy did proceed to embarrass himself the next day, well then, Harry Hart should not possess such embarrassing thighs.

No man _needed_ such well-bred thighs, calves squeezing confidently around horseflesh as Rothschild’s party went fox-hunting. One could get by in life quite sufficiently with thighs half as nice, as Eggsy would well exclaim. There was no reason whatsoever for a body to have those sorts of muscles, and thereby not a fault of Eggsy’s at all, certainly not a matter of _indiscretion_ , when Michelangelo himself would have stopped in the midst of painting the Sistine Chapel to gape agog at Hart’s thighs. 

“Did you eat something that disagreed with your stomach?” his mother asked him from where he was milling in the gazebo with the ladies practicing their watercolours, having not been extended an invitation to join the men at hunt. Michelle palmed his forehead. “I vow you are turning a most alarming shade of rouge.”

Hart disagreed with his stomach, Eggsy thought sourly. Ordinarily it was he who toppled other men’s balance, twisting their sense of ease, not the other way around. It was all the fault of those damned thighs. Or perhaps that mouth. No, no, he thought, it was those hands and the memory of those hands bearing down on Eggsy’s hips, leaving a chiaroscuro of bruises that had been sore for days. 

Eggsy knew that he had the habit of becoming a proper fool when in the sight of something he wanted very badly. It was only that he had not wanted anything this badly in a long time; he had forgotten the knack of it. 

When the men returned from the hunt, Rothschild only halfway victorious with a caught hare rather than a fox, Eggsy strode up to Hart, J.B. wagging his tail behind him. “Lud! Better luck next time,” he said, smiling sunnily up at Hart. “Or is it that foxes are not your usual sort of prey?”

“That may be so,” Hart replied as he dismounted his thoroughbred, who was a prime bit of blood, and handed the reins over to a stable boy. “You are looking very well today, Mr. Unwin. It is a shame that you and your companion here could not join us.” He lowered himself onto his haunches and offered J.B. his fingers. “Hello, and what is your name?”

“His name is J.B.,” Eggsy said, watching J.B. slobber hungrily over Hart’s gloved hand. He waited for Hart to express revulsion over the ruin of his York tan gloves, but Hart simply offered the dog a small smile and patted his head. “Don’t know why,” Eggsy said, finding himself unable to stop now that he had begun. “Dashed silly name for a dog. But dashed silly hunting dog too. The wrong breed for it entirely. No wonder none of you were able to catch a fox if you’re using all the wrong hounds for the job.”

“Do you know much about fox-hunting then?” Hart asked politely. Eggsy wanted to take his politeness and crack it between his fingers like an egg with its yolk.

“I got eyes, don’t I?” Eggsy said. “Got something else of yours instead. Might be I should return it to you.” He reached one hand into his waistcoat pocket, finishing for the crown that had sunk deep into the tattered lining, but then J.B. went into a frenzy at the sight of a bird, and Eggsy cursed. He dropped the crown into the grass, and alongside it the golden coin with the rose and the lily that he carried on his person at all times. He bent to fetch both coins immediately, clumsy in his haste, but not before Hart’s eyes cut towards the golden coin and then away.

“Here,” Eggsy said, shoving the crown into Hart’s dog-slobbered hand. “Buy yourself something nice with it.”

Hart took the crown and curled his fingers overtop his palm. He seemed to be thinking about something, and then he cleared his throat and said, “Eggsy.” Who froze at the sound of his name, as if he knew he had been caught doing something with no reasonable excuse. “May I ask where you found the other coin? With the flowers on it.”

“I—” Well, there was no use in feigning ignorance. Hart had already seen the bloody thing. “I believe it belonged to my father. Just a foolish trinket, no doubt,” he said quickly. “Something mawkish to remember him by.”

“I think perhaps we should have a private discussion after all,” Hart said. 

“What do you—”

“Come to my room after dark. The door on the right side of the men’s hall, closest to the stairs,” Hart said. “Don’t be seen.”

Eggsy’s mouth dried up like a winter riverbank. 

When Cousin David found him later in the garden, Eggsy was informed that he had acquired a smear of dirt on his cravat and it was imperative he don a fresh one before he was to rejoin their company. But Eggsy did not have a secret wealth of cravats, only two, and his other cravat had a sizable rip from a jaunt with J.B. that his mother was mending for him, though he suspected even Michelle’s small, neat stitches would not be able to disguise its misuse. Hart, he imagined, had a wardrobe that when opened was nothing but cravats, a kingdom come of neckcloths. 

He would borrow one from him, he decided, when they met for their private discussion. Thinking of what Hart might wish to say to him made his stomach flip over. It was one thing to discuss their shared proclivities. That, Eggsy would happily discuss until discussion turned into demonstration. But Hart’s face when he had glimpsed the rose-and-lily coin! 

He thought, then, of the man who had given him that coin, whose face he could no longer remember. 

Don’t be seen, Hart had said.

Eggsy was not seen.

Hart’s cravat was a flourish of silken cream when he opened his door for Eggsy. Although it had been knotted in perfect, intimidating Mathematical fashion when last they spoke, evening and privacy had loosened its slack and its points now hung carelessly over his collarbones. 

“Would you care for something to drink?” Hart asked, gesturing to his credenza where he had several bottles awaiting his command. He had a glass of port in his own hand, which he swirled gently. He was not, Eggsy observed, wearing his boots or stockings, and the sight of Hart’s rough-knuckled toes made his head fill with noise.

“If we are to have the conversation I think we will have, then no,” Eggsy said.

Hart reached into his waistcoat and produced a watch on a glimmering silver fob. He turned it over and let Eggsy see the rose and lilies cut cleanly into the smooth back.

“I had wondered when I heard your name, you know,” Hart said. “Unwin. Not so uncommon a name, and yet,” he mused, “you have much of Lee in your face. I should have been quicker-witted about it, but in my own defense, it has been a long time and your mother most certainly wasn’t calling you _Eggsy_ before.”

Nor his father. Eggsy’s father had been a tailor. He was run over by a horse one night when he had been locking up the shop where he served as junior assistant. The horse, Eggsy’s mother had said, had been mad; its owners put it down after the dreadful incident. Eggsy never had reason to question this series of events. When he turned twelve years old, his mother had taken him to the very shop on Oxford Street his father used to work in, had introduced him to his father’s former employer, the snowy-haired Mr. King. It had been proof enough to his boyish mind, which flinched when he left the shop and happened to peer down at the stones on the road, imagining them drinking up his father’s blood.

But it happened all the time. Animals lost control, carriages tipped over, people lost life or limb on busy London streets whether they deserved it or no, whether they were murderers or thieves or a tired man after a long day’s work eager to go home to his wife and son. 

Yet here was Hart, still talking. “If I had any sort of sense I would not be telling you this at all. There is no earthly reason you should know. But, as my colleague Merlin is fond of telling me, I am a damned romantic.” His lip curled in a dry smile.

“A romantic?” Eggsy scoffed, spreading his arms. “I see no evidence of that.”

“Truth,” Hart said, “is something of a limited commodity in my line of work, which must be why I am so absurdly fond of it. There is no earthly reason you should know about your father’s work, not when it will make precious little difference to your circumstances now, but there is no reason you should not know either. You are, at the end of the day, no longer a boy—”

“—not when you’ve had your cock in my arse,” Eggsy interrupted.

“I should not have.”

“A wee too late for regrets now, isn’t it?”

“Listen to me: you are young, sweet, and beautiful,” Hart said. “I remember what that was like once. They are weapons that, kept sharp, will serve you well for many years.” He took a swig of his port and rolled it around inside his mouth. When he spoke again, Eggsy could see the red stains on the points of his teeth. “I should have taken my leave the moment I saw you in the library.”

“‘m not _sweet_ ,” Eggsy sneered, “and my father was a tailor.”

“Your father was a Kingsman,” Hart said. 

 

 

The first time Eggsy had ever taken another man’s cock into his mouth, he had been fifteen and Cousin David thought he might be improved with some lessons in Church Latin. Eggsy’s understanding of Latin began abysmally and only plummeted from there into the ninth circle, but after four weeks with his Latin tutor, his understanding of anatomy had increased tenfold. 

By the time he was eighteen Eggsy could make a man blaspheme with a lick of his tongue and a twist of his fingers, but he remained slow to add up sums, decipher a map, or even reach the end of a chapter in a book without faltering. Learning dripped through his head and out of his ears. He was too easily distracted and too prone to failure. How could Cousin David find him a profession when his only true skill would make his mother weep for shame? _Life comes hard to Eggsy_ , he remembered Mr. King telling his mother that day in the tailor’s shop. _It does for some folk_.

It must have been why Hart was so keen on having a laugh at him. Mutton-headed Eggsy will believe anything. It must have been why Hart was so keen on making up this story about Kingsmen, about defenders of the realm, about Eggsy’s poor father being a bloody _spy_. 

Eggsy’s grief was something he had learned to live with, sewn under his skin into a pocket right beside his heart, and he did not need high-in-the-instep Harry Hart to concoct a fairy-tale to help him swallow it. Kingsmen! What a bag of moonshine. 

If Hart was not interested in picking up on their previous encounter and wished Eggsy to leave him alone, he could have merely _said_ so. 

Eggsy was glad to leave him alone after their discussion. Or at least he was glad to try. It was too bad that he failed the next evening at Rothschild’s ball, where all the notable families in the county had been extended a gilt-edged invitation to join the guests already presiding at Marbury House. Hart was there, of course, and Eggsy too. He had scrubbed his cravat clean of mud and wrangled it the best he could, though anyone with eyes could see it was not quite good enough. Oh but what did it matter? He only needed to last a scarce handful of dances before he could sneak away to spend the rest of the night playing with J.B.

It was a shame, for Eggsy did fancy himself an excellent dancer and was usually a popular choice for partner among the women, who knew that he would guide them gracefully without pressing for a deeper acquaintance and causing scandal. Tonight was no different; several young women of Rothschild’s party asked him to fill in their dance cards, and if he agreed with less enthusiasm than he was normally wont to give, well, they did not comment on it. 

The great candelabras of Rothschild’s ballroom spilled shadows and light over the dancing partners, brightening the jewels in the women’s hair and the men’s boots polished to unforgiving high shine. The chamber orchestra moved through country-dances and cotillions before arriving at the quadrille, and here Eggsy was in higher demand than ever before, for few ladies wished to admit they struggled with the complexities of this new French dance, lest it be thought they could not afford a good dancing master. 

Perhaps that should become his trade, Eggsy thought. It was not a wholly unpleasant one; it would give him a task that challenged his body rather than his mind, and marriage-making mamas aside, he did enjoy the company of many of these young ladies, who could be wickedly funny when they were not worried about their reputations. He danced two quadrilles in quick succession with Cousin Lydia’s younger sister Charlotte, sliding her through the steps of the _chassé, couple balote_ , and the _pas de basque_. 

Hart, he was sore to observe, was equally as skilled. As the rows of partners swung past each other, he could see Hart smiling benevolently upon the Viscountess, holding her hand in his like a delicate soft-boiled egg. 

When they passed each other after the dance, Eggsy made sure no one else could see, and he palmed himself through his breeches while sticking out his tongue.

“Really now,” Hart murmured.

Viscount Rothschild came up to them and clapped his hand on Eggsy’s shoulder. “Aha! Here I stumble upon our two finest dancers, locked in some sort of conspiracy! What is your name, boy?” He did not wait for a response. “I see that our Harry has taken an interest in you these last few days. It can only be to your benefit, you know. Our Harry is quite the Corinthian.”

“Is he?” Eggsy smiled. “I’ve no idea of his reputation.”

“He has no match in the sword, pistol, wrestling ring, nor wardrobe either,” the viscount said cheerily. “Stay close to him and perhaps he will impart some of his wisdom onto you. Young bucks in the clubs are always chasing after him begging for a scrap of his attention, not that Harry often gives it!”

Hart looked amused. He had the trick, Eggsy was coming to realize, of always seeming mildly entertained by the going-ons around him without exerting any effort to be a part of it. “There are many worthy gentlemen of the _ton_ to teach,” he said, “but regretfully I have not nearly the time to teach them.”

“Time, time, time! I never see you at White’s anymore, Harry,” the viscount said. “Why is that? You are always off gallivanting on the Continent or boarding some ship to God knows where.”

“A man likes to see a bit of the world outside of England, my friend,” Hart replied. “I can hardly protect our mutual business interests while sitting on my arse at White’s, can I?” He removed his watch fob and glanced at it, surely no meaningless trick when he held it at such an angle that Eggsy could make no mistake of the rose-and-lily sigil. “Ah, her ladyship wishes for another dance. Pardon me, your lordship. Mr. Unwin.” He bowed and slipped out of sight, making not the slightest sound even as he brushed by Eggsy’s side.

Oh, Eggsy had no doubt that Hart did make the time for young bucks when he wanted to, especially when said young bucks were underneath him and panting. His throat flushed at the thought. He could not decide which he wanted more, to grab Hart by the points of his starched collar and kiss him, or to land him a facer on his full red mouth.

So preoccupied with his vivid fantasies, he did not notice he had bumped into a young woman until their feet were tangled together, or so to speak, for when he glanced down he saw that the woman’s feet were two iron contraptions without shoes. “Apologies,” Eggsy said, “didn’t mean to do that. Clumsy bastard, I am. Are you all right then?”

She was staring at his face. 

“Do I got food on my nose or some such?” He tried to rub it off. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Unwin,” she said.

“Yes?” he replied. “Have we met before?”

She bowed her head slightly, giving him a full view of her thick dark hair. “I believe we have a mutual relation. May I speak to you in the hallway? It is so warm in here and my head feels faint.” By contrast her voice was cool and tempered like the Serpentine in December.

“Oh, ah, why not?” Eggsy said. It _was_ rather warm in the ballroom, to be expected by the wealth of sweating, moving bodies. He followed the woman whose name he did not know into the hallway leading to the conservatory, where a servant carrying a tray of orange water blossom orgreat divided into fluted glasses passed them by and then disappeared round the corner. 

“Feel better now?” Eggsy asked the woman. “I am afraid you have the better of me. You know my name but I don’t even know yours.” Which is what he meant to say, except he could not breathe because the woman had wrapped her hands around his throat and was strangling him.

“Ahhhh, ack, ughhh,” Eggsy choked, his windpipe clenching together and his face turning blue. By the devil, her hands were strong! He tried to push her away, his fingers scrabbling over her wrists, but she merely pressed down harder, her eyes cold and bright and very, very keen, studying his face as he began to go limp.

Oh, but this was simply _too_ bad. On those rare occasions when Eggsy contemplated his own death, he had certain _expectations_ of it that included handsome lithe men, a bottle of wine in each hand, an extravagant feathered bed, and a beautiful unblemished corpse. Now that he was truly banging the knocker at death’s door to demand entrance, he wished he had done a better job of scrubbing the dirt from his cravat, dabbing the sweat stains from his armpits, or using his mother’s maquillage to cover the spots on his chin. If he knew he was to die, he would have dashed spent more time on his toilette.

Then, to his great surprise, he did not die, for Hart was grabbing the woman by the throat and tossing her aside. She landed on her iron feet without pause, drawing a blade hidden in her skirts. Hart responded by unsheathing his own blade from his walking stick, and Eggsy tried to watch them, he truly did, except he was preoccupied with slumping on the floor gasping with black clouds passing over his eyes. Air rushed into his lungs with rib-knocking force, and he vowed to never be so cavalier about breathing ever again.

“—Kingsman,” he heard the woman hiss, and there might have been more after that, only Eggsy did not hear. Hart leaped smoothly, driving himself forward on his left foot, and the tip of his blade scratched the woman’s shoulder. She snarled and parried him backwards, her blade like a swift silver insect. Hart guarded himself with due haste, his movements quick and neat.

Eggsy thought he should rather do something instead of lying on the ground like a discarded shoe. He _would_ do something, only give him another second—

But there was no second to be had. Hart was on the offense again, where his neat ripostes gave away to a flurry of astonishing brutality. He was driving the woman viciously hard until she spun on her mechanical heel, took a running jump off the wall, and sped down the hall towards the conservatory. Hart began to give chase, muscles already in play, neck corded with exertion, but then he seemed to remember Eggsy and he stopped.

“Are you hurt?” he asked, voice rough with true concern. He grasped Eggsy by the arms and pulled him to a standing position, his thumbs ghosting over Eggsy’s jawline. “Can you breathe?”

“I — I believe so,” Eggsy said. “I must be, if I am still alive. Lud, what was that? Who was she? She knew my _name_.”

“As I said,” Hart bit out, “you look a great deal like your father.”

“A Kingsman,” Eggsy said.

“Yes.”

“Kingsman!” Eggsy said again, tipping his head backwards so that his bruised Adam’s apple bobbed up and down his throat when he swallowed. Before he knew what he was doing, he started to laugh.

 

 

“A secretary!” Michelle exclaimed with a note of surprise and perhaps, dare he notice it, suspicion. “He wants you for his _secretary_?”

“Oh aye, Mama,” Eggsy said, crossing his legs and leaning forward. “Made the offer most fervently and on bended knee. The man insists he will be _lost_ without me.”

“You do realize that I have seen your copperplate before,” she said. “Tell me, does this man suffer from any irregularities in vision? Assure me he can read, at least.” But she was smiling as she spoke, and she pressed a hand to his knee to pause his nervous jostling. Her long, white fingers interlaced with his. “I will stop jesting. You know that I am pleased. This will be a wonderful change for you, though I am saddened that you shall be leaving me behind.”

“I will visit you at every opportunity,” Eggsy promised. “Hart lives in Chelsea and that is not so great a distance from Mayfair. And you will tell me if David or Lydia ever treat you badly, yes? I will come round straightaways and bash them in the nose.”

“You will do no such thing,” his mother said. 

“Who knows what I will do?” Eggsy grinned. “I’ll be a changed man after this.”

Michelle smiled again, and Eggsy wondered how much she knew. He had asked Hart as much, to which Hart had replied that he did not believe Lee Unwin had ever confessed to his wife the truth of his profession. If she did not know and thus was not keeping secrets from Eggsy, then that meant he was keeping a secret the size of Jonah’s whale from her. 

The feeling did not sit well with him, but his mother’s health was in decline and he was not certain how he would even begin to broach this particular tale. He would tell her when it was time, he reasoned, and squeezed her fingers while making sure his smile stayed sure and strong. No reason for her to worry.

He was reluctant to leave her alone with her horrid cousins, but Hart had very clearly stated that his house in London did not have room for her. Judging by his pained expression, he wished his house did not have room for Eggsy either, but since there were crazed assassins trying to kill Eggsy on account of his Kingsman father, some precaution was necessary. A pretense of Eggsy being his secretary would have to suffice in order to divert scandal, and by this point Eggsy could do no more than shrug and assent. He did not, after all, actually wish to be murdered.

“Her name is Gazelle. I have written to my colleagues and found out as much,” Hart said when Eggsy found him in his chambers that evening. Hart was packing his belongings into his portmanteau, folding each shirt and pair of breeches with tender, logical precision. In his mind he knew where every item was meant to go and how it would fit there. It was hypnotizing to watch. Forget theatre and opera; Harry Hart packing his wardrobe would bring the crowds flocking to Drury Lane.

“You mean the woman who tried to kill me,” Eggsy said, launching himself onto Hart’s bed. “Dark hair, iron legs, soul full of bedlam and madness?” He displaced a snuffbox with his landing and cackled in glee as it bounced off the bed and fell to the carpet. 

“Yes, that same woman,” Hart said. He paused in his packing to rake his fingers through his hair. He bent over and picked up the snuffbox, Eggsy admiring the flex of his arse. “Pass me that book over there, will you? Be _gentle_ about it, it is a first edition.”

“As your secretary, you will simply have to get used to the way I hand books to you,” Eggsy said, but he made himself be gentle anyway. “This woman with the bombastic name,” he prompted. “Gazelle. You were saying.”

“She is an associate of Richmond Valentine,” Hart said, “a man whose singular purpose in life is to destabilize England. He has not been seen in the country for many years, and our last reports place him in Vienna, but his servant Gazelle—”

“—was late of Marbury House with her pretty hands around my neck,” Eggsy said. “Glad to add to that particular piece of advanced Kingsman intelligence.”

Hart looked annoyed, but then he righted his expression to bland indifference. “Valentine was a long-time opponent of your father’s. No doubt he has passed on the same animosity to Gazelle. While you are staying with me — a _temporary_ arrangement, I must stress — I shall have to teach you to defend yourself. Better that we catch Gazelle and eliminate her as a threat entirely, but just in case she finds you before we find her, there are things you should learn.”

Eggsy folded his legs underneath him and sat up. “Like fighting.”

“Let us start with the more basic lesson of having an appropriate sense of danger when following strange women with mysterious intentions,” Hart said archly.

“We were dancing! Nothing alarming about that.”

“She had metal legs, Eggsy.”

“I do not make judgments about people based on their legs,” Eggsy said. “Or else you would hear some very strong opinions about yours.”

“She had _blades_ attached to her toes.”

“Oh. Well, I didn’t see that.”

“That much is apparent,” Hart said. “Now pray go back to your rooms and finish packing your own bags. We leave for London at first light.”

“Eager, aren’t you?” Eggsy muttered, but he slid off Hart’s bed and onto his feet. Hart was not exaggerating when he said first light. Eggsy barely had time in the morning to finish scribbling a final note to leave on his mother’s nightstand when Hart cleared his throat impatiently on the lawn, the stablehands rushing around him to harness his horses to his curricle. Eggsy eyed the curricle jealously. Glossy black with a swan-necked dashboard, it was a sleek little monster.

Speak of the devil. Eggsy whistled a jaunty tune as he deposited an armful of J.B. into the curricle. “I am bringing us a friend,” he announced.

“I would ask if the viscount is aware of this runaway friendship,” Hart replied, “but since I would rather waste no more time, I won’t. I have sent a letter ahead of us to London, and God knows if we tarry here Roxy will attempt to make us luncheon and we shall return to find the house burnt to ashes.”

“Who in the world is Roxy?” Eggsy asked, climbing up into the curricle beside Hart. He hoisted J.B. into his lap and let him lick his fingers while his tail thumped with excitement. “Do you have a wife you haven’t told me about, you sly dog? No, not you, J.B. I know _your_ heart is free for the plucking.”

“Roxy is my pupil,” Hart said. 

“Thought I was your pupil.”

“As I am Galahad, Roxy is Lancelot-in-waiting,” Hart said. “She is my protegee. Also my maid-of-all-work. Oh, don’t make that knowing face; the pretense is as necessary for her as it is for you. More so, in her case, being a young unwed woman.” He picked up the reins.

“Certainly,” Eggsy said, “but what is a Galahad?”

“You mean who.”

“So it is a person?”

“Galahad is a Knight of the Round Table,” Hart said disbelievingly. 

“What is a Round Table?” Eggsy grinned. “What makes it more desirable than a square table? Does it fit into a room better? I think my Cousin David had a round table once. He had it imported from France. Is that where Round Tables are made?”

“Good Lord,” Hart murmured. “Angels of grace be with me in my time of need.”

“I think,” Eggsy said to J.B., burying his face in his fur as the curricle lurched forward, “you and I are going to enjoy ourselves _immensely_.”

 

 

The spring air from Devonshire to London was cold and wet, clammy moisture collecting in the groove of Eggsy’s collarbones. At times the roads were rough, the horses kicking up stones as they flew along, and Hart was a fast, nearly reckless driver, prone to sudden sharp turns and bouts of increased speed. His hand on the reins were calm at all times, however. He spoke, as they journeyed, of the history of the Kingsmen, and Eggsy had the sensation of listening to a living book. It was manifestly a subject that Hart was passionate about, and though Eggsy could not make heads or tails of it at times — he thought naming themselves after knights was ridiculous, all in all —, the sound of Hart’s voice brought him to a content lull.

He would have slept, sitting straight up in the seat with J.B. snoozing on his lap, save for the cold, which swam through his threadbare grey topcoat and laid a hand on his skin. He sneezed without meaning to, and Hart paused in his comprehensive survey of English intelligence services since the time of good queen Bess. 

He stopped the horses. “What are you doing?” Eggsy asked sleepily, blinking his eyes slowly as Hart shrugged out of the green twill cape that overlaid his driving-coat. He wrapped the cape around Eggsy’s shoulders. 

“But will you not be cold then?” Eggsy blinked.

“I am usually overwarm,” Hart said. “See?” He touched the back of his hand to Eggsy’s cheek, his rings pressing sharply against skin, and Eggsy struggled not to lean after him when he took his hand away. “It is not in my best interest for you to catch ague before we arrive.”

“Carry on then,” Eggsy murmured. He wanted to bury his face into J.B.’s scruff again, this time not to laugh.

When they arrived at Hart’s home in London, Eggsy made himself stay awake so that he could look his fill. It was not a particularly noteworthy home, very typical of its kind in Chelsea where Hart counted among his neighbours an infinite variety of physicians, barristers, and merchants who made their fortunes shipping spices and tea from the East Indies. Compared to some of the other houses on the lane, Hart’s seemed somewhat downtrodden and dusty, truth be told, the residence of a man who was not used to spending much time behind its walls. 

“You look asleep on your feet,” Hart remarked in the foyer, removing his gloves and tossing them aside onto a serving plate. “More used to lying abed at this hour?”

Eggsy made a rude gesture to show what he thought of Hart’s opinion, just in time for a young woman in a maid’s cap to come trotting down the stairs. “Harry,” she said mournfully. “Great woe has befallen us. I tried to make sausages and kippers for you since Cook is on holidays with her daughter in Bath, and they turned out so delicious that some sort of madness overcame me and, would you know it, I ate them all myself.” She ground to a halt in front of Eggsy. “Is this him then? Percival’s son?”

“Roxy, Eggsy Unwin,” Hart said with a smooth gesture. “Eggsy, Miss Roxanne Morton. Try not to kill each other before dinner. I shall be in my study for a while.”

“Aye, several letters came for you while you were gone,” Roxy said without taking her eyes off Eggsy. “I think one of them is a new mission from Arthur.”

“Make Eggsy comfortable,” Hart instructed as he left. A little while later Eggsy heard the click of a door shutting — the study, presumably. J.B. barked and scuttled along after him. Eggsy listened to the sound of his paws slipping and wheeling across the floor.

He smiled widely at Roxy, who was still staring. “Pleased to meet you. You seem surprised. Did you think I would be taller?”

“No,” Roxy said slowly, “when Harry told me he was bringing someone home, I immediately pictured you to be short, squat, and hog-ugly, so really I knew you the moment you walked in.”

“Ha!” Eggsy said, snorting. “I hear you are supposed to be some sort of Kingsman in the waiting then? Hart — no, _Harry_ ,” he corrected, spreading the name over his tongue like a preserved jam, “doesn’t know it yet but I have decided to be a Kingsman too. Seems as good of a profession as any. Better than going back to Mayfair, at least.”

“You cannot simply _decide_ to become a Kingsman,” Roxy said, crossing her arms. “It is a rigorous selection process. You see this?” She waved her hand where she was missing the tip of her ring finger. “A training mission gone bad with a Javanese kris dagger. I was the only candidate who came out in mostly one piece.”

“Please,” Eggsy scoffed, “a piece of a missing finger? You have nine other good fingers to use. Surely you do not need all ten. It hardly seems a hardship at all.”

Roxy narrowed her eyes at him. “I think I can guess exactly where Harry found you. I know his tastes, you see.”

“Sausages and kippers, you mean?” Eggsy said. “Seems there’s a horrid lack of them right now.”

The corner of Roxy’s mouth lifted in a smile. “I am going to thrash you, Unwin. Just you wait. I am going to put you over my knee and thrash you until you wail like a wee babe.”

“All right,” Eggsy said. “then I will bite your face off.”

“How?”

“With the teeth in my mouth, I presume. What else would I use to bite with?”

“Employ a little imagination and I am sure you will think of it.”

“I assure you I only have the one mouth,” Eggsy said. “Right here between my nose and my chin. When I bite you, you will see it coming.”

“If I can see it coming, then it is not very fearsome of you, is it? A good thing you are not training to be a Kingsman,” she said. She pressed her nine and a half fingers to her one mouth and yawned. “Well, we shall have to bite each other’s faces to pieces later! First, do you want some tea and toast? God but I am still hungry.”

 

 

The chamber he was provided at the rear of the house was cluttered with the remains of old, forgotten furniture from at least a century ago, but it was suitably warm and clean, especially after Roxy lit a fire and ran a feather duster over the surfaces. “Here,” she said, handing him the duster when she was finished, “my pleasure for one day only. After this it is your responsibility to keep your own quarters. I’m Harry’s maid only when I feel as such.”

“Then who is the housekeeper?” Eggsy asked, giving brief thanks that there was, at least, a mysterious Cook, though she was equally mysteriously away to Bath.

“No housekeeper,” Roxy said. “You shall see. Harry and me, we make do. Too much staff is too much risk.”

“I suppose,” Eggsy said, who, as someone who regularly flaunted sodomy laws, had never contemplated the risks he took quite as much as he ought to.

“Harry is a very private man,” Roxy said. “Doesn’t like other folk knowing his business. Too many questions with too many answers. You will get used to it.”

He did not see Harry for the remainder of the day. He had his tea and toast with Roxy, who gave him the penny’s tour of the rest of the house, which was hardly worth a penny as it seemed other than a few rooms of regular use, most of it was as cluttered and ignored as Eggsy’s bedchamber. Roxy said that the residence belonged to Harry’s family — he was first cousin to the Duke of Gainsborough — though before Harry took up quarters it had been rented for several years to a university professor with a penchant for curios. 

The professor had died in the house, Roxy said with morbid relish, unmarried with no children, and Harry had simply packed up the poor fellow’s belongings and moved it aside where he did not have to look at it. “He means to sell it off one day, only who has the time,” she said.

The study door remained closed the length of the tour. Roxy led Eggsy past it to an open room with wooden floorboards and an armoire to the side which, she showed him, contained all manner of weapons. Eggsy gaped at the variety of swords, pistols, and yes, even a Javanese kris dagger that Roxy let him hold. “We practice every morning after breakfast,” Roxy said, “unless Harry is away on mission, in which case I do solo practice. If you aren’t too much of a lazy pillock of the _ton_ , you will join us too.”

“‘m not _ton_ ,” Eggsy said with more force in his voice than even he had anticipated. “I am not one of them.”

“Walks like a peacock and talks like a peacock…”

“What of you then?” Eggsy said. “Where’re you from?”

“Me?” Roxy said. “My ma was Harry’s first maid back when he was still a young man and bent on keeping house proper-like. She brought me to live here — the less breath wasted on my father, the better — and then,” she shrugged, “one of Harry’s enemies followed him home one night. He shot her in the chest when she answered the door. Ran away after. Harry was good enough to let me stay with him even after that. Hired a nurse and governess for me even when he didn’t have to.”

“I am — I am sorry,” Eggsy said haltingly, picking at a loose thread on his waistcoat. 

“You can help me find my mother’s murderer one day and kill him,” Roxy offered kindly.

“All right.” Eggsy gestured at the study. “Do you think he will be in there for long?”

“As I said, there were a great many letters sent while he was in Devonshire,” Roxy said, “and I do believe Merlin means to drop by later on in the eve. Let them do their business. When Harry is ready to talk to us, he will let us know.”

Merlin was a tall man with a smooth, bare head that reflected shimmers of candlelight when he removed his hat. Eggsy sat on the stairs and waved hello with J.B. squirming in his lap. “Hell and damnation, but Harry is predictable with his tastes,” Merlin said to himself and moved to the study without greeting Eggsy in return. 

Harry opened the door for Merlin, meeting Eggsy’s eyes briefly. He had taken off his waistcoat and unbuttoned half of his fine cambric shirt so that Eggsy could see his thatch of wiry chest hair. Then the door closed and Eggsy did not see either Harry or Merlin for the rest of the night, and he gave up trying to eavesdrop and went to bed, J.B. curled up beside him.

In the morning Harry came to his bedchamber. Eggsy woke mid-snore and tried not to flail out of bed. J.B. started barking and running in circles, bumping his nose into the wall. Eggsy clutched his quilt to his chest to preserve his modesty, more used to his mother waking him than anyone else, and then saw Harry and let go. “What’d you want?” he growled, his voice scratchy. 

“Get dressed and meet me in the weapons room,” Harry said.

Eggsy blinked, running his tongue over his dry, sleep-cracked lips. He rubbed at a patch of drool on his chin where a new red spot was forming. Then he flew into a maelstrom of motion, not stopping until he was skidding to a halt in the weapons room where Harry was waiting with two chairs, an antique lacquer table, and a pot of tea. “Where is Roxy?” Eggsy asked, plopping down on one of the chairs. He made a selfish grab for the tea and a sound of impatience when Harry took his damned sweet time pouring it.

“She is running a task for me,” Harry said. “It will take her most of the day, I imagine.”

“That so?” Eggsy said. “You look very nice today, by the way. _Very_ dashing.”

“And that is the very first topic I wish to address before Roxy returns,” Harry said, nudging a cup of tea at him. “Don’t drink it so quickly, you’ll burn your mouth.” Eggsy ignored him. “In any event,” Harry went on, “if you are to live in my house, however briefly, and be under my tutelage, then whatever intimacies that may have occurred between us in the past must stay in the past. Do you understand?”

Eggsy paused, teacup halfway up to his mouth, steam hot against his chin. “Do you regret it then? How we met in Moorfields.”

“I do not regret what is a fundamental aspect of my nature,” Harry said, “nor should you. Life is not meant to be lived in shame for every small pleasure.” He took out his watch fob and turned it over in his hands, a seemingly unconscious gesture. Eggsy remembered feeling those rough callouses of Harry’s thumbs press bruises on his hips as he mewled. “But for this living arrangement to succeed,” Harry said quietly, “we need to agree to maintain a purely professional relationship. No sly remarks. No bold suggestions. It is not fair to Roxy, nor would it serve either of us well for me to show any particular attachment to you.”

Eggsy drank his tea; it was indeed piping hot against the soft roof of his mouth. He made himself swallow, though his throat was still sore from Gazelle’s grasp. “Agreed then,” he said. “I won’t try to get you into bed anymore, not even when I am angry with you.”

“Good.”

“Because truth is, I want this,” he said, looking at the weapons room, “more than I want to suck your cock.”

“Inelegantly put but your point is taken,” Harry said. “Now let me tell you what we shall need to address in your training first and foremost. A Kingsman and his associates are _gentlemen_ always. There are codes of honour and standards of behaviour to uphold, or else we are no more than mere brutes. First lesson: you should have asked me before taking a seat.”

 

 

Eggsy was no great learner, but he had shamed himself enough in the past with his slowness in new subjects. Enough. He would not shame himself this time. No matter what Harry told him to do, he decided that he would do it and without giving a tinker’s damn about the toll it took on his body, or how tired he was each day after Harry put him through his paces. He reminded himself even when it hurt that his father had walked these steps before him, and above all else Eggsy ached to be his father’s son.

Every morsel of history Harry dropped about Lee Unwin was precious to him. Eggsy lapped up the stories like an animal. 

“Lee was not the swiftest on foot, but he was strong,” Harry said, showing Eggsy how to wrestle a man to the ground. “Few could overcome him when he had his arms locked around you. Like this — see where I am applying pressure?”

Or:

“Lee preferred the pistol over the sword,” Harry said, demonstrating the proper way to load a barrel. “He had the steadiest hand I ever saw.”

Or even:

“He never won at whist, not once while I knew him,” Harry said whilst showing Eggsy how Kingsmen shared secret ciphers through a deck of playing cards. “Never knew if it was because he couldn’t or if he didn’t want to.”

“He is teaching you an awful lot,” Roxy remarked one evening when Harry was attending a ball at the Duchess of Sallis’ and she and Eggsy were attempting to put together a bubble and squeak for supper with a limited degree of success. “Don’t see why you need to know about card-ciphers when you are not going to become a Kingsman.”

“I suspect he enjoys teaching for the sake of teaching,” Eggsy said, frowning intently over the quickly smoking stove. “Pray tell me Cook returns from Bath soon.”

“The day after tomorrow,” Roxy said. “And I think you are right. Harry, bless him, is an insufferable know-it-all. A walking Library of Alexandria with a loud voice. If he can share something he knows with you, then by God he will share it whether you want it or not.” She poked at the stove with a long-handled spoon. “Must be because he needs to be secretive so much the rest of the time.”

“Harry’s mind is strange and woolly place,” Eggsy said.

“Better than an empty one like yours, at least,” Roxy said. She stopped poking the stove and started poking him instead. He batted her hands aside, and then thought better of it and pulled her towards him. He pretended to playfully bite her finger with the tip missing, and she laughed. Her laugh was high and girlish, exactly like a girl at Almack’s, and he felt a warm surge of fondness beneath his breastbone.

“I am not tempted by you, Eggsy Unwin,” she said. “I have lived for long enough among lavenders that I will only be impressed by a rose.”

“You are not the sort of girl I would want to marry,” he said, watching her make a face. “You _are_ the sort of girl I might ask for help in learning new combat forms, however.”

“Indeed, are you struggling already?” she smirked.

He did not know how to explain that while Harry was a patient, expansive teacher with an easy way of dicing complicated physical movements into a series of small steps, he touched Eggsy as rarely as possible. Eggsy understood why, of course, for they were meant to leave that nonsense behind, but when he thought Harry might put a hand on his hip to shift him into proper form, he refrained with such judiciousness that Eggsy did not have the heart to tell him he suspected he would learn better if Harry simply went in and manipulated his body as he wished. He could wear gloves if he was so concerned that Eggsy would collapse like a blue-veined virgin at the first hint of a warm hand on his skin.

He hoped Roxy would help. By now he had regular occurrence to watch Roxy’s forms. In the mornings Harry always started lessons with Eggsy but he ended with Roxy, and Eggsy found any measly excuse he could to stay in the weapons room, because Roxy was riveting. She was fast and strong and graceful, a dancer with bladed arms, a whirling dervish with her hair flying ten ways out of her cap. Next to her, Eggsy was as clumsy a pup as J.B.

“Why is it,” Eggsy asked Harry, “that I rarely see you physically spar with Roxy? You are forever giving her instructions and tests and watching that she does not make mistakes while completing them, but at her level does she not need…” he thought on it, “more active demonstrations?”

“Hardly a fortnight in and you are already questioning my methods?” Harry said, though he did not sound irate, not truly, for Eggsy was coming to know very well the different ways Harry could sound, and this was drollness mixed in with a little long-suffering. Harry probably sounded exactly like this at Kingsmen meetings too.

“Merely curious, is all,” Eggsy said. “I know that you are… well, I mean that you are a proper strop, I did you see against Gazelle, after all. But most of the time, you do not… you do not demonstrate it to your best effect,” he finished.

“A gentleman does not need to strut and crow,” Harry said. “A gentleman only shows his hand when it is ready and he is required to. As for Roxy, every afternoon she goes to train with several of the other Kingsmen-in-waiting, so worry you not, she gets her active demonstrations.”

“Is that where she goes every afternoon?” Eggsy said, pleased to make the discovery. 

“While she takes her leave after luncheon, I thought we might make a trip of our own to a tailor’s,” Harry said, flicking Eggsy over with a critical eye. Eggsy resisted the urge to turn out his ankle. Gentleman, he reminded himself, he was meant to be a _gentleman_. “Even though you will only be with us a short while,” Harry said, “it pains me to have to accidentally crank my neck and have to look at you. Lee was a friend of mine. I won’t let his son traipse around London with holes in his shirt.”

“Suits me just fine,” Eggsy said. “Where are we going?”

 

 

Damnation. Of course it was Mr. King’s little tailor shop on Oxford Street. Eggsy could feel his heart drop to the bottom of his lungs like its strings had been cut. He told himself not to look at the cobblestones at the front door, for it would give him away entirely, but his heart twitched and flopped in his chest with wet anguish. He licked his cracked lips, hoping at the very least he was not trembling on the outside. He would need more mastery of his body than that if he wished Harry to accept him as a Kingsman-in-waiting.

He made himself study the cobblestones. They were ordinary cobblestones, he told himself. He regretted his decision immediately. When Eggsy was tripping over his own feet leaving the hack, Harry paused. “That was not like you,” he said.

“Stone on the ground,” Eggsy croaked.

“You have been odd and clammish since the moment I told you where we were headed,” Harry said, tossing a coin at the hack driver while dismounting. But whereas his mother or even Roxy would proceed to ask if Eggsy was all right, and whether or not he was coming down with ague, Harry did not. Even when he was looking at Eggsy and making no pretense otherwise, he had a face that could stay placid and still when he wished it to, which seemed to be most of the time. Eggsy wondered if one day he would learn that Kingsman form too, Man With Private Thoughts He Has No Desire to Share, and then no one would be able to guess what he was thinking.

Harry was content to wait him out, and this was another arena in which Eggsy could not hope to win. He fidgeted inside his greatcoat, feeling the wind through the holes, and then he said, with as much disaffection as he could manage, “Did my father truly die here? While locking up the shop. Or was it a convenient lie to protect his work?”

I do not care what the answer is, Eggsy tried to say. Look into my eyes and see how little I care, this is all very old history, and I am no longer a child with a child’s grief.

But Harry did look into his eyes, and Eggsy crumpled a bit like a concertina fan from the force of his own caring. He looked askance, pretending to admire the neat blue trimming over the door that read King’s Goods for Men. His face burned. Harry observed this and it was with an embarrassingly gentle tone of voice that he replied, “Lee died on a mission in Switzerland. He was never a tailor here. I will take you to visit his true grave, if you like. He was buried where all Kingsmen are interred after their years of service, and the Prince Regent himself pays his respects every year in March.”

Eggsy nodded sharply. “I see. Now let us inquire with a man about a coat.”

“A coat, a new waistcoat, some shirts made of a better quality linen that do not look like it will fall apart around your shoulders any moment,” Harry agreed. “I do not ask for much.” He led Eggsy into the shop where a white-haired man was bent over the _The Times_ , reading it with his ankles crossed. “I also wish to introduce you to Arthur, who is first among Kingsmen and our wise, glorious leader.” The last he said with some sly pleasure, and the man named Arthur laughed.

“Mr. King,” Eggsy said with surprise, though it was foolish to be surprised by anything at this point. “That is to say, Mr. Arthur.”

“I answer to both in this shop, never fear,” Arthur said, while Eggsy sketched a hasty bow. “You have grown since your mother last brought you here, which is what usually happens, I suspect, with boys and plants and sometimes problems, though I hope you are not bringing me a problem, Harry.”

“Just Eggsy,” Harry said, still smiling.

“Splendid,” Arthur said. He lifted his quizzing glass from the _Times_ and studied Eggsy. “Looks more like Lee by the day.”

“Which may be the crux of our difficulties,” Harry said, “with Gazelle and who knows how many other associates of Valentine’s in town again.” 

“Then we are glad to have you watching over him,” Arthur said. “Least we can do for Lee’s son, I daresay. How is he in his lessons? Does the apple fall far from the tree?”

Eggsy opened his mouth to reply, but Harry astonished him by placing a hand on his arm; even through his gloves, Eggsy was distressed to learn, he could feel Harry’s easy strength. “He is learning how to put up a passable defense,” Harry said, leaning into him and squeezing his forearm hard when Eggsy squawked in outrage. Passable? He had done a damned better job than _passable_ when one considered he came into these lessons with no prior experience. Why, even Roxy had, quite begrudgingly, paid him a compliment yesterday while she was helping him practice a form.

“However,” Harry added, his hand sliding to rest on the crook of Eggsy’s elbow, “my first objective is still to track Gazelle and make sure he has no need to even put his learning into practice.”

“Looks like the two of you are getting on then,” Arthur said. “I have not heard any reports of Roxy clawing both of your eyes out either, so I assume all is well in your little menagerie of lost children and misfits.” He looked at Eggsy again, eyes crinkling with heavy lines like strokes of calligraphy. “I do see why you brought him to the shop. That coat is dreadful.”

“You say that but you have not even seen what is underneath,” Harry said happily, and Eggsy pulled his face into an expression deserving of the unwarranted remarks.

“Oh but do not _snarl_ , Eggsy,” Harry said. “It makes you look quite deranged.” To Arthur he said, “I had a thought. What of the bolt of indigo silk for a waistcoat? Double-breasted with a lapel.”

“Not too dandyish then?” Arthur asked. “It is not a colour I have ever seen you yourself wear, I might say.”

“No, it would not suit me,” said Harry, who preferred his somber blacks with some swathes of deep reds or greens, “but on a youthful buck like Eggsy it would be quite fetching, and I would not wish to see such fine silk go to waste because no one dares wear it.”

Eggsy folded his arms over his chest, feeling like a chicken at the market. “Does it matter in the least what I think?”

“Not in the least,” Harry said sweetly.

“I will pay you back one day, you know. This,” he waved, “is only temporary.”

“And you say he has no manners,” Arthur said to Harry.

Harry looked at Eggsy thoughtfully, and Eggsy scowled even further until his face prompted Harry to shake his head and chuckle. “I do not delude myself into thinking I can stop you from any task you set your mind to,” he told Eggsy. “Now if you will be so kind as to let Arthur take your measurements? We have before us a Kingsman mission of great importance and even more daunting difficulty: somehow we shall transform you into the pinkest of the London pinks.”

“Is he always such a humorous fellow?” Eggsy asked Arthur, who went to fetch his measuring tools and pins.

“Oh yes,” Arthur said. “He is the jester of my court.”

It was true that in the shop, among the presence of another Kingsmen, with no matter more urgent than ensuring Eggsy had a decent new wardrobe, Harry did seem loosened. As Eggsy painstakingly held out his arms for measurements and did not move, not even when his nose began to itch, Harry removed himself to a corner and produced a book. He read while Arthur worked, looking up to offer the occasional droll comment until Arthur’s replies quickened the pace of Harry’s responses, and after a great length of time discussing the proper cut of a gentleman’s greatcoat, Harry had stopped pretending to read entirely.

Then, to Eggsy’s delight, Arthur began to share stories of Harry’s own training, when he had first come to the Kingsmen as a young man fresh from Oxford. Eggsy, of course, demanded to know only the most disastrous stories, which Arthur supplied, and that was how Eggsy gained a new weapon over Harry in the form of a story about the Marquis of Demers, a torn pair of stockings, and a duck with one eye.

“Do not tell Roxy that story,” Harry said, “or I shall be forced to poison you and have your body dragged to the gutter like a sack of bones.”

The afternoon passed quickly and pleasantly. When Harry and Eggsy left the shop, and Harry was donning his hat while signalling for a hack, Eggsy said out loud, “He wasn’t what I expected, Arthur. Not only that I knew him as Mr. King before. I mean that—” he shrugged, “he seemed kind. Is the leader of the Kingsman allowed to be kind?”

“It is easy enough to be kind,” Harry said, “when you have already purged your share of cruelty elsewhere.”

“What do you mean?” Eggsy asked, trying to imagine Arthur in a fight and picturing only the frenetic stabbing of clothing pins. He bit his fingers to stop the giggle that bubbled out of his throat.

“I mean that in the service of king and country, one is called upon to make certain choices and set aside certain graces,” Harry said. “I would not have wanted to face Arthur as my enemy on the field. Thankfully, there will never be any reason to.”

“He did tell some wonderful stories,” Eggsy said. “ _Oh but do not snarl_ , Harry, was it not you who was telling me only the other day of the importance of passing down history to all the Kingsmen to come? Why, someone will be sure to benefit from your experiences with one-eyed ducks, I am sure.”

“The keeping of archival records and bodies of memory is not something I would ever jest about,” Harry said, but he was biting down on his cheek to keep from smiling.

“Tell me more,” Eggsy said, which _was_ a jest, but Harry proceeded to do exactly that, as the hack arrived and they set off on their way home. A true scholar-gentleman, Eggsy thought warmly, and it was somewhere in between Harry’s very strong opinions about the cost of missions and ledger-keeping that Eggsy had the curious thought that they may prove to become friends. It was not what he would have ever desired before, for Eggsy had precious few friends and none of them had ever put their cock in his mouth and creamed seed onto his tongue, but suddenly he found that he _did_ want it, very much. 

He pressed his arm to his forehead, checking for fever, and when Harry asked him what in tarnation he was doing, Eggsy did not bother to hide his smile.

 

 

Harry often proclaimed that a foundation of a good defense was a keen sense of observation. This was mixed in with his regular claims of the superiority of Scotch over French cambrics, or the correct method of ensuring J.B. did not piss on the carpets. Eggsy had grown to only listen to Harry’s many and varied opinions on many and varied matters with only half an ear. However, he was also in the business of pleasing Harry so that Harry might forget this entire ruse of temporary arrangements and accept Eggsy as a Kingsman-in-waiting in truth.

To pursue that goal, Eggsy made a game for himself. Harry and Roxy often spoke the names of London’s most distinguished society, people who were friend or foe to the Kingsmen, and Eggsy had his own recollection of important persons from his years with his cousins. He would go to Hyde Park during the hour of the promenade, he decided, and he would put as many names to faces as he was able.

Roxy was scrubbing the hardened soot from the drawing room’s fireplace as he prepared to depart, her nine and a half fingers stained in black. J.B. was napping in a ball beside her. Eggsy knew that she did not have to do this. If there were true housemaid tasks to be accomplished, Harry had an agreement with a widow of his acquaintance who would come and bring her daughters as well as two buckets of soap and water. 

The women would then set to the house from dawn to dusk. By the time it was done Harry would pay them generously with coin and with some yards of linen from his ships, and they would agree to return when next summoned. In between those periods, Harry, despite his otherwise fastidious care for his wardrobe, did not seem to particularly mind a smidge of grime. Roxy only cleaned when the notion struck her, or when her mind was elsewhere and she needed to distract her hands.

Eggsy tapped Roxy on the shoulder. “I shall be gone for the evening,” he said. “Try not to break the stones with your eagerness. I’d rather a dirty fireplace than a toppling one.”

“Off with you,” Roxy said. “If you meet a handsome fellow with a well-turned ankle in a dark alley, I don’t want to know aught of it.”

“I never said—”

“No, but as I said, I know Harry’s tastes,” she replied easily.

Everybody knew Harry’s tastes, Eggsy thought, who could come within shouting distance of him. Harry pressed his tastes — his opinions, his thoughts, his judgments — upon the people in his life like loaves of bread into open palms. Here, take this, this is for you, there is plenty more in the pantry, you needs only ask.

While Roxy was assaulting the fireplace, Harry had been absent from the residence the entire day, presumably for business. He had left a list of exercises and prescribed tasks for Eggsy at the breakfast table, which Eggsy had read over while cramming sardines with mustard sauce into his belly. Praise be to the heavens, Cook had returned from Bath well-rested and pleased to have a hungry young man in her house, and Eggsy could hardly help it that when he dropped the completed list on Harry’s desk in the afternoon, there was more mustard than parchment.

In Hyde Park, three hundred oil laps lined the Rotten Row. Men in threadbare coats were lighting them for the eve when Eggsy arrived while their betters raced by on the perimeter with their showy thoroughbreds. Rotten Row was for those who desired a bit of speed in their promenade, and Eggsy was forced to leap aside to not be overrun. He whipped his head around to glimpse the man driving his high-perch phaeton with such aggression, and was pleased to be able to recognize Henry Balmoral, a baronet’s son, though they had never met prior.

The Fashionable Hour drew many of the _beau monde_ to Hyde Park. If one was not seen, then one was forgotten, and there was no worse jab in London than to be forgotten. Even Cousin David, who most days preferred his theology books over balls, bristled when he did not receive the appropriate invitations from his peers. 

Eggsy wondered if he would run into Cousin David this hour, or Lydia more like. Not on Rotten Row, of course, for it was much too fast for them, but if he were to wander to the Ladies’ Mile or along the Serpentine, then perhaps.

He strolled at a brisk pace and marveled at the well-heeled ladies and gentlemen who overtook him on their beautiful barouches or smart sporting curricles. A lone lady drove by with a perfectly matched pair of grays, and Eggsy offered her an appreciative doff of his hat. She smiled back very slightly and turned her face away, but not fast enough that he was unable to confirm it was Lady Rushton, the widow of the previous Earl Rushton. There were stories about her particular fastness. Harry had remarked that with her deep pockets and unorthodox leanings, she might prove to be a benefactor to the Kingsmen, a cornucopia for the plucking if she had not already been reached by their enemies.

He heard a noise behind him, and was prepared to step off the road once more to make way, when he saw that it was Harry atop his curricle, accompanied by a fair-haired woman with a wide, round face whom Eggsy knew to be Gawain.

“Halloa, young protegee of Harry’s,” Gawain called out. “You look to be on the hunt.”

“My lady,” Eggsy said. “‘m merely enjoying this fine weather and an opportunity to take exercise among the trees.”

“You were staring at Lady Rushton’s back with a rather intent expression,” Harry remarked. “Were you planning on approaching her?”

“Approaching her?” Eggsy scoffed. “How can I, when I am on foot and she is riding hell bent with the devil behind her?”

“Climb in and we may be able to assist you in catching her,” Gawain said. “Harry and I have made repeated overtures to Lady Rushton in the past, hoping to make an ally of her vast wealth, but neither of us are quite charming enough to her liking, are we?” She pressed her elbow to Harry’s sides, and Harry’s right eyebrow flicked. It must cause Harry unbearable indigestion to know that he was not charming enough for someone’s liking. 

“Eggsy, on the other hand, may be the ticket,” Gawain finished.

“Whoring him out already?” Harry said archly.

“Whereas some may see tools,” Gawain replied, “I see weapons. What of it, young Eggsy? Fancy taking a crack at this particular walnut?”

“I am yours to command,” Eggsy grinned.

“I shall be the one to give him missions, if it is all the same,” Harry said. “Lady Rushton is a puzzle we will have to deliberate over later, for I believe there was a pressing reason you and I are here tonight on the promenade, and—” He did not finish his sentence, for his face changed and Eggsy and Gawain turned together to see a phaeton rushing down the opposite side of the lane, wheeling freely and drunkenly in the direction of a child who paid it no attention.

“Christ,” Eggsy said, and before either Harry or Gawain could dismount, he began to run. The child by now had noticed the oncoming phaeton and was frozen in terror, her small feet pulled to the ground as if by magnets. She cried out, high-pitched and frightened. Eggsy barrelled into her, threw his arms around her, and pushed her to the side where the force of his leap sent them both into the grass. The child hit her head on the ground and cried even louder, just as the phaeton careened by and Harry turned his curricle with a curse, chasing after the phaeton’s driver to give him a piece of his mind.

Eggsy helped the child stand. Her bonnet lay on the grass beside them, and he picked it up, placing it back on her head and tying the blue ribbons gently underneath her wobbling chin. “Are you hurt, sweetling?” he asked. “What’s your name? I’m Eggsy.”

She was sobbing too violently to provide her name, so Eggsy pulled her to his side and gave her an encouraging squeeze. “You are safe,” he said. “I promise. Safe with me. Come. Where is your mother or your nurse? We must go find them.”

“I-I-I don’t know!” she wept. “T-t-they have left me!”

“I am sure it is simply a mistake and they are looking for you quite fervently,” Eggsy said. “I will help you, never fear.” The girl would not stop crying, so Eggsy smiled even more brightly and said, “I have found more difficult things in Hyde Park than your mother before. For instance, have you ever had to go searching for little green men?”

The girl gaped at him.

“Oh aye!” Eggsy said jovially. “Little green men no bigger than your thumb. Have you heard the story of Thumbelina before? Well, it is like that. Their bodies are this large,” he held up his thumb, “and their heads are the size of buttons, and their eyes the size of seeds. One day I found a family of little green men growing in my garden bower, and I asked them their names, to which they said they were named Tom, Willie, and Jenkins, if you please.”

He peered at the girl, who had stopped crying to stare at him intently. As good a reason as any to continue with the adventures of Tom, Willie, and Jenkins as he held her hand and began the search for her family. It was by the time he had reached the adventure of Tom, Willie, and Jenkins, and the farmer’s dropsy cow that he saw Harry and Gawain returning in their curricle with a nursemaid who let out a cry of relief when she saw the girl at his side.

“You cannot wander away like that!” the nursemaid said, clambering off the curricle to sweep the girl in her arms. “Your mother will have our heads for it!”

“—saw a flower,” the girl mumbled into the nursemaid’s chest.

The nursemaid locked eyes with Eggsy. “Oh thank you, sir! Thank you, thank you, I can never repay you!”

“It was no trouble,” Eggsy said. “‘m glad everyone is all right.” He lowered himself onto his haunches and said to the girl, “Well, I fear this is where we part ways. We shall have to continue the story of Tom, Willie, and Jenkins another time.”

“—and the dropsy cow,” the girl said, her face still buried in her nursemaid’s shirt.

“Of course the dropsy cow,” Eggsy said. “Goodbye girl with no name.” The nursemaid mouthed a word. “Amelia,” he said. “Goodbye girl named Amelia.” 

They watched the pair of them go. “I hope,” Eggsy said once they were out of sight, “that you gave that cursed phaeton driver a talking to. Almost running over a child, and for what? To prove the speed of his horses? Damn him!”

“Worry not, he will be driving home smelling of piss after Harry caught up with him,” Gawain said. “You did well, Eggsy. Quick reflexes, fast thinking, brave and dramatic heroics like something from a nabob’s tale — I commend you.”

Eggsy nodded, much obliged, but the brunt of his attention was given over to Harry, whose face was perfectly sanguine but whose mouth, the very mouth that had no doubt cut the phaeton driver down to ribbons, now seemed very soft and red of a sudden, especially as he opened it and said, quietly, “That was very well done,” he said. “Exceptional work.”

Exceptional! Eggsy’s breath seemed stuck in his chest like a piece of tar, and perhaps he was only imagining it but Harry’s breathing seemed louder too. Exceptional! When they returned to Chelsea after escorting Gawain to her own lodgings, he found Roxy in all haste and proceeded to chant the word in her ear until she beamed his head with a lump of coal.

 

 

“He is bright, fast, strong, and hungry for anything we might give him,” Gawain was saying when Eggsy lumbered to the breakfast table the next morning. “Harry, you can pretend no longer. We need more Kingsmen now that the latest Percival has been killed in Geneva. You must put your personal sentiments about this boy aside.”

Eggsy stopped by the door and fumbled with J.B. in his arms. He lowered J.B. to the ground and whispered _shoo_.

“He is Lee’s son,” Gawain said. “This is his birthright inasmuch as it is yours.”

“Dear friend,” Harry replied, “if you must come haranguing me over matters concerning my own household, can you not do it when I am more awake? And Eggsy, stop eavesdropping and come in. You and J.B. are as subtle as a pack of wildebeests.” Eggsy entered the drawing room sheepishly as Harry was slathering honey on a hot roll. Gawain was sitting opposite Harry with a carafe of Arabian coffee, wearing a pair of men’s Hessians on her legs that were sprawled out from beneath the tablecloth.

“Good morning, Eggsy,” she said. “I feel I must apologize beforehand on the backwards ways and pighead stubbornness of your teacher.”

“It is quite all right,” Eggsy said, dropping into a chair. “Harry and I, we’ve come to an understanding, haven’t we?” He grabbed for a hot roll of his own. “He can be as pigheaded as he likes as long as he teaches me how to incapacitate a man in less than a minute.”

“Quite so,” Gawain said. “Then how do you feel about accompanying me to the Kingsmen-in-waiting session this afternoon? I daresay Roxy attends nearly every one, but I do not believe you have ever been. It is exceedingly educational.”

“Gawain,” Harry said in warning tones.

“ _Galahad_ ,” she replied. “It cannot do the boy any good to be cooped up here with you all day. And as fine a sparring partner as Roxy is, Eggsy must be exposed to variety if you do not want Gazelle to snap his pretty little neck the next they meet.”

“Aha,” Eggsy said to Harry, “you do not want anyone to snap my neck, do you?”

“I am a fox beset by hens,” Harry said drolly. “As neck-snapping is the least of my worries when it comes to you, by all means, go with Gawain and Roxy. I have business to attend to with Arthur this afternoon, so you will have to entertain yourself.” He reached over the table and produced an unmarked jar of some thick-smelling cream. “Take this ointment for your bruises,” he said. “You will be sure to need it.”

“How smug he is!” Gawain said while tying her bonnet after breakfast. “But Harry has always been like that, even when I knew him as a young lad and our fathers did business together. He was always laughing back then — loved a good jest, especially if it was at a friend’s expense.”

“I have seen Harry laugh before,” Eggsy said, following her, “but I cannot imagine him to be as merry as you describe.”

“Well, boyhood, you know,” Gawain said. “The unyielding dullness of growing up and being responsible for the countless lives of the nation will leak the laughter out of anyone.” She stopped and looked at him. “And Harry has been changed of late, since his accident.”

“His accident?”

“If you do not know, then it is not my place to say,” she said. “Let us focus on the task at hand. There are four Kingsmen-in-waiting and by the end of this afternoon you should know their entire pompous lot.”

It was the quartermaster Merlin who oversaw the group practices in a discreet rundown house in the East End. Roxy was already present when Eggsy arrived, and momentarily her face shifted with envy when she saw Gawain, but then she smoothed it over. “Making new friends, are we?” she said, coming up to Eggsy and affectionately punching him in the ribs.

“Not so hard,” he said. “We have hardly begun.”

“Did Harry give you the ointment? Then you shall find out how hard I can punch your stupid paunchy stomach after all,” she said. The others started arriving through the door, one by one, and she seized his arm to take a turn about the room. “Let me introduce you. This is Geraint-in-waiting, Tristan-in-waiting, and Bors-in-waiting.”

There was, Eggsy noticed, recalling the overheard conversation that morning, no Percival-in-waiting.

The Kingsmen-in-waiting were, as a whole, not a friendly or loquacious lot. Roxy aside, they looked at Eggsy with inquiring gazes and a scarcity of greetings. He knew he was being sized up, measured, and judged, and he put on his best smirk in response to it, for if they wished to judge him, then he was polite enough to return the favour. “Bors is the newest,” Roxy whispered to him as they stretched. “Only been in training for three months.”

Not so much longer than Eggsy then. Eggsy felt his pulse quicken and he pressed his head to his knees in a long, languid stretch to hide any anticipation he might feel. Bors-in-waiting was a spotty lad with a farmhand’s muscles and a wide, square face. Am I a match for him, Eggsy wondered.

After they stretched, Merlin put them through a series of tests. He did this quite regularly, Roxy whispered to Eggsy, to see where they stood in their practice. First was the poison test, where they were required to identify a number of poisons from otherwise harmless substances. Second was a cipher test, where they were given an encoded letter to make heads or tails of. Then, in the grassy, weed-choked yard behind the house, they were given an archery test, a pistol test, and at the very last, hand-to-hand combat.

Eggsy scraped by the poison test, failed utterly the cipher test, and did passably with the bow and arrow and the pistol. He saw quickly that Roxy led the group in the charts, with Tristan and Geraint a close second and third. Bors, however, appeared to be slower and more fumbling than the others, and several times Eggsy caught Merlin frowning at him and making a note in his book.

Gawain, in turn, caught him. “I would advise you to spend less time worrying about Bors-in-waiting and more time worrying about your own showing,” she said, not bothering to lower her voice. Eggsy flushed.

“I know that I am well behind with ciphers,” he said. “I know I must do better.”

“Being a Kingsman is in the mind as much it is in the muscles,” she replied. “You _are_ promising, sweet child, but you are also of no use to us as a dullard.”

Eggsy clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw ached. He would prove himself to her, he thought, and to Merlin and Roxy and the rest of them as well. They would see that he was his father’s son. When Merlin called the names for the final hand-to-hand round, he knew even before it was announced that it would be him against Bors. He removed his shirt and his boots, leaving himself bare-chested in his breeches and stockings. His knuckles popped as he stretched with his hands above his head, his toes bringing the arches of his feet off the ground. He felt dizzy with readiness, seeing everything as if through a window: Bors’ grim face, Bors’ sweating neck, Bors’ huge hands, large enough to crush Eggsy’s skull and squeeze the juice out.

There was a murmur; Arthur and Harry had arrived to watch.

Eggsy circled Bors in the grass. “Ahoy,” he said, baring his teeth, and Bors rushed him with a lion’s roar. Their bodies made impact; Bors’ strength sent them crashing to the ground where Eggsy straightaways hooked his ankle around Bors and threw him off balance before he could rise to his feet. Eggsy scrambled to his knees, pinning Bors by the shoulders. Bors pushed him off easily.

They rose. Eggsy’s shoulder hurt from where Bors had tossed him, and sweat formed a wet crown in his hair, licking up against his temples. He wetted his lips as Bors came for him again, and Bors was strong, good lord he was strong, but he was not as fast as Roxy and certainly not nearly as fast as Harry. Eggsy had been spoiled for fleet-footed instructors as of late, and whilst he could not catch up to Roxy or Harry, he found he could with Bors.

His own fighting was reckless and unpolished, he knew. The forms and stances Harry had taught him were forgotten the moment Bors landed his knuckles on his face. Eggsy’s nose burst with blood and he rallied, salt and iron in his mouth as he threw his entire weight at Bors to bring him down once more. He felt an animal, bloodied and frenzied, kicking and hitting whenever he was given the opportunity. 

“Nasty business,” he heard Merlin mutter. “What _are_ you teaching him, Galahad?”

He did not hear Harry’s response. Once they were properly wrestling on the ground, knees and elbows locked together, he reared his fist backwards and punched Bors in the nose, and punched him again. Bors snarled and rolled them over so that he had Eggsy on his back, but Eggsy retaliated by digging his thumbs into Bors’ eyes and pressing down. Bors screamed. Eggsy screwed in his thumbs even harder.

“Stop this!” Merlin interrupted, striding forward and pulling Eggsy off. “Enough!”

Shame crept in when bloodlust disappeared. Eggsy bit his lip and dared to look up at Harry. God but he had made a proper mess of this. A Kingsman did not fight dirty, a Kingsman did not resort to filthy brutish tricks. A Kingsman was a _gentleman_ , a _paragon of English virtue_ , and if Eggsy found his bags packed in his rooms tonight, then it would be his own fault for forgetting and not being good enough.

“Get away from me, you fucking maniac,” Bors hissed when Eggsy approached him to apologize or to shake his hand, he did not know what was expected. Eggsy’s hand dropped to his side listlessly. He was still stained in blood from his nose to his chin; his mouth was smeared with it like he had buried his face in a dead animal’s carcass and drank his fill.

“Eggsy,” Roxy said softly, but it was Harry who came forward.

“Let us clean you up,” he said, removing the handkerchief from his waistcoat. He began to dab at Eggsy’s face, and half of Eggsy wanted to push him away while the other half wanted to bury his face in Harry’s strong shoulder, press his teeth to the line of muscle there, and rage. “You know that is not how Kingsmen conduct business,” Harry said in his ear as he soaked up Eggsy’s blood with his handkerchief. 

“I know,” Eggsy said dully. “I forgot how to — to be civilized. I wanted only to best him.”

“It is not how Kingsmen conduct business,” Harry repeated, “but too many Kingsmen have been dying of late. If Gazelle were to walk through this door right now, that is exactly how I hope you would fight.”

Eggsy sucked in a breath between his teeth.

“There, as clean as I can make it,” Harry said, giving one last swipe to his chin. “Let Merlin have a look at your nose. I fear it may be broken and he is a more accomplished medic than I.” He touched one knuckle to Eggsy’s chin, tilting his face up. 

“I was wrong,” Harry said quietly. “I do want you to be a Kingsman. I only wished before to protect you from a life you do not understand.”

There was a rushing vibration between Eggsy’s ears, a hiss like a kettle on a hot stove. He hurt all over and his stomach felt as if he might be sick on the ground. He remembered that people were watching and hated them for doing so, and himself for making such a spectacle when all he had wanted was to make a good impression. “I understand well enough what sort of life this is, and have never, not once, asked for your milk-coddling,” he bit out, and Harry let him go, face unfathomable.

“Then I will speak to Arthur,” he said.

 

 

“When will we know? How long shall Arthur take to decide?” Eggsy asked, loping one leg over his other knee on the divan in Harry’s study. He pressed a cold, damp cloth to his nose to bring down swelling, muffling his words.

Harry heard him nonetheless. “In matters such as these,” he said, reading through his day’s missives, “patience is less a virtue than it is an earthly necessity.” He sliced open a letter with an opener. “Arthur does not deliberate carelessly.”

“He chose Bors-in-waiting, did he not?”

“I had not realized,” Harry said, “that you were so fine a specimen and so advanced in your lessons that you can cast aspersions so easily unto your brothers. Bors-in-waiting has his own gifts,” he said, glancing briefly at the contents of the letter in his hand, “and there is a reason and a purpose behind all that Arthur does.”

Eggsy sat up, folding his legs beneath him. “Is Arthur ever wrong?”

“He is but a man, is he not?” Harry said. “Unless he has somehow ascended into godhead since yesterday’s afternoon tea.”

“But you trust him so readily.”

“Are you saying that you do not?”

“No, I mean — I scarce know the man,” Eggsy said, wincing as he reapplied the cold cloth over his nose. “He seems a good sort — kind, I believe I said when you took me to see him at the shop. It is not that I doubt Arthur. Mayhap what I am truly trying to ask is — how does one trust anyone at all? If being a Kingsman is a game of steps and counter steps. Have you ever been — betrayed?” He did not like how his words came out of his mouth piecemeal and hesitant.

Harry set his letter down; it did not appear to be of consequence. “I have been betrayed, yes,” he said evenly.

If Eggsy could be a coward, then he was perverse enough to also be brave. “Gawain said you used to laugh more. Then you had an accident.”

“Gawain’s tongue wags like a donkey’s tail,” Harry said.

“You said before that I do not understand what sort of life this is,” Eggsy continued, “and now I am doing my damned best to try. What I think I do not understand, in fact, is _you_. Why are you so kind one moment and then cold the next? Why does everybody say you laugh less often than you once did? Why do you live here, in this house,” he waved, “so dusty and dark, locked up in your study, when Roxy is in the very next room. Roxy who adores you, Roxy who hungers for your praise, and to whom you give it so begrudgingly?” 

He did not realize he was out of breath until he was finished, and his cheeks were warm and pink. He did not realize that these were the things he had wanted to ask until he had asked them.

“Do not raise your voice to me, Eggsy,” Harry said. “I am not a locked box for you to open. I am not a mystery to be solved. I am not yours,” he added, “in any way.”

Eggsy’s fists clenched over his knees. “Roxy wishes nothing more than to become a Kingsman like you. She wishes to emulate you in every manner, and I cannot decide if she is brilliant or foolish for it. If I am to be a Kingsman — if Arthur should say yes, then I want to know,” he took a breath, “I want to know what sort of Kingsman I should strive to become.”

Darkness passed through Harry’s eyes, a tip of a shadow. He stood from behind his desk and walked over to the divan. Eggsy did not shrink at Harry’s approach, he did not, but he could not stop his body’s imperceptible tremble as Harry leaned over him, a solid wall of muscle.

“What sort of Kingsman should you strive to become?” Harry said in a low, deep voice, barely a release of air between his teeth. Eggsy could feel the familiar heat of his body even through three layers of clothing, though they did not touch. “Why, that is easy enough to answer. A _living_ Kingsman. A Kingsman who walks back from a mission unharmed and uninjured. Do not worry about the rest of it — it is dross, it is frivolity.”

“What _happened_?” asked Eggsy. 

“There was a church,” Harry said, “in Oxford. Three years ago. I had believed the vicar to be a friend of mine. He was meant to pass on crucial information about Richmond Valentine. He —” his throat flexed. ‘He drugged his parishioners with one of Valentine’s concoctions. Turned them mad against me.”

Eggsy stared into his face, quiet.

“I fought,” Harry said. “Of course I fought. I fought and I won, and then when I was stumbling out of the church, everyone inside dead, there Valentine was waiting for me. I had no strength left in me. He put a pistol to my head,” he said, indicating where, “and he shot me.”

“Shot in the head?” Eggsy asked. “How are you still here then?”

“How indeed,” Harry laughed mirthlessly. “I suppose I had fortune’s own hand on me that day. Merlin was two steps behind me. He found me, bandaged me, and took me to the nuns of St. Raphael the Archangel, where they removed the bullet from my head in surgery and waited for me to die. I thoroughly astonished everyone by _not_ dying.”

“That much is evident,” Eggsy said stupidly.

“But you see, dear boy,” Harry said, “when a bullet goes through your head, you are never quite the same after. Your brain gets scrambled like a basket of eggs. I am many days in great pain. I am not as quick or as strong or as clever.”

Eggsy said nothing.

“I am not the teacher Roxy deserves,” Harry continued, “and I am not the Galahad that Arthur wants either.” He chuckled, baring his lean throat. Eggsy was mesmerized. “I spend my long days writing letters, accounting for ships trading bolts of cloth overseas, and fucking beautiful boys in shambling molly-houses. So there you are. Does that answer the question to your liking? Do you feel,” he said, still leaning over Eggsy on the divan with his arms braced against the wall, “that you _understand_ me better?”

“Yes,” Eggsy breathed, though it hurt through his nose to do so.

“Good,” Harry said viciously and returned to his desk. “Now I hear a sound at the door. Be a good lad and go answer it.”

 

 

Harry was markedly peevish with him for the next two days, and then, on the third day, he was not. He seemed too tired to have any particularly strong feeling about Eggsy whatsoever, and now that Eggsy knew, he recognized that Harry was in pain. Roxy saw it too, and fussed over Harry anxiously, but Harry waved the both of them off with a less than genial grunt.

“We have reason to believe that Valentine’s agents have been in touch with Lady Rushton,” Harry said. “The loss of her as a potential ally would be grievous to us.”

“If you need me to spread my legs for her, simply give the word,” Eggsy offered. “I have always found older women to be fond of me.”

Harry gave him an aggrieved look. “You may keep your legs closed.”

“Very well,” Eggsy shrugged. “Was merely trying to be useful.”

“Pray resist the urge.”

Whilst Eggsy scowled, Harry went on. “If indeed Lady Rushton is compromised, then it would not behoove her to know that we are aware of her situation. If she is still ours to catch, then we must catch her, but if she is no longer ours, there may be uses for her still.”

“Thus we need to find out,” Roxy said. “I have a cousin Jane who is a housemaid in her service. We can begin our search there.”

Harry managed a smile for her. “An excellent notion.”

Roxy’s excellent notion led to the conveyance of helpful information: that Lady Rushton’s household was short two footmen on account of two brothers deciding that they would make a better living by sea than by soap. Eggsy hardly needed Harry’s thoughtful look to sweep over him before he was scrambling to his feet, ready to begin. 

“You will find that I am quite well-versed in a footman’s duties,” he said. “There was a time when my cousin David thought below stairs was a more appropriate role for a youth of my station, until my mother put an end to that.” It had been the one and only time his mother had raised her voice to Cousin David, damning the consequences.

Harry continued to look wan and ill, but he could not find fault with Eggsy’s claim. Quite early the next day they were dressed in older, shabbier clothes and standing on the doorstep of the service entrance of Anders House, where Harry proceeded to tell the steward of the house his and Eggsy’s extensive credentials and prior employment. He rattled off a series of references, including ten years for himself in the service of the Duchess of Sallis, who Eggsy would only later realize meant Gawain.

Eggsy rather thought he overdid it, as their purpose was to be convincing footmen, not convince the steward that Harry was qualified to take over the entire household. He made certain to seem especially young and foolish, to balance the scales, drawing attention to his unattractively battered nose and interjecting Harry’s speech with the most inane remarks he could dream up, until Harry seemed annoyed and ineffectual and the steward satisfied.

“You may thank me later,” Eggsy said airily when they were being shown their rooms, employment to commence immediately as her ladyship was to have several friends over for dinner that very night. “I would no more believe you a servant than myself a prince.”

“If ever asked,” Harry said, studying their livery with distaste, for it had been meant to fit shorter and knobbier men than he, “I would have intimated I was a fourth son who, despite good education and careful upbringing, gambled away my late father’s fortune and must now make my own way in the world. The story has been successful for me in the past, and has explained some of my particularities.”

“A dissolute drunken wastel of a fourth son, is it?” Eggsy grinned. “I am not certain that I would believe that tale either. You are much too elegant for it.”

“Ah,” said Harry, “but I may surprise you yet.” He tossed Eggsy’s own livery over, where Eggsy caught it with one hand. He wondered, briefly, how they would go about changing their clothes in front of each other, and whether Harry would wish him to turn and face the wall. However, even before he could finish the thought, Harry was already disrobing without a care, and Eggsy made a sound that most certainly was not a squeak as he hurriedly did the same.

It was a good day to complete their task. Lady Rushton’s dinner soiree appeared to have been planned at the very last moment, so the servants were in a slight panic and not given to paying overmuch attention to the new footmen, only to bark the occasional order and to tell Eggsy to get out of the way, clumsy oaf. The steward, who began by showing them the premises, quickly became distracted by an incident in the dining room with the silver, and was soon nowhere to be found.

“Ordinarily if there were two of us, we would split the house to search,” Harry said, drawing Eggsy aside. “However, in this case you would not know what you are looking for. So the plan is thus: I shall search and you shall be my watch. Understood?”

“Yes.”

“At the first sign of trouble, I want you to leave,” Harry said. “Even if I am not behind you. Is _that_ understood?”

“I hear you,” Eggsy said.

“You hear but do you understand?” Harry replied. “I am not in the mood for half-answers; my head is throbbing too much for that.” When Eggsy strategically chose not to respond, Harry turned on his heel. “Evidently a debate for later. Come then. We only have so much time before the others remember we exist and have some urgent, pressing need for us to sort out the tablecloths.”

It seemed to Eggsy exceptional that a man such as Harry Hart could glide through Anders House without heads lifting to take note of his passing. Eggsy could barely stand to be in the same room as Harry without having to drink in his presence every few moments with curious eyes. 

It was not even that he was handsome. Handsomeness could be bought cheaply enough. It was that Harry, even when he was in pain, aweary, and manifestly wished he was elsewhere — even then Harry never hesitated, never bumbled, never even hurried his pace. He was never aught but leisurely and assured.

He was in possession of exquisite timing as well. That was the trick of it, Eggsy thought, the trick of going unnoticed even when it was plain Harry did not belong in his secondhand livery, was an interloper with a face too bright and cunning. Harry knew how to choose his moments well, to cross a hall when the maids were too busy examining a spot on the wall, to pass behind the butler’s back when said butler was caught in a full-body sneeze. Harry studied people, predicted their next few actions, and then made his decisions.

Trailing behind him, Eggsy was indeed the clumsy oaf the servants accused him of being, but it did not matter as long as Harry got through first. Eggsy was no concern to them even if they did notice. There was never a doubt that Eggsy belonged here, and he wondered how that might be to his own advantage one day, when he was a Kingsman, if Arthur should so choose.

From a chambermaid on the second floor Harry teased out Lady Rushton’s whereabouts: that she was at the milliner’s this afternoon and would pay calls to friends before returning for supper. As such there was no worry they would stumble over her ladyship, not even when Harry vanished inside her study and began to go through her books and letters.

Eggsy stood watch at the door. To ease some of his tension he took the lily-and-rose Kingsman coin from his pocket and danced it over his knuckles. There was, however, no one who came by; Harry had thoroughly convinced the chambermaid that she was needed with the laundress, and all other household attention was wholly focused on the kitchens and the lavish meal that Lady Rushton had demanded.

At last Harry emerged from the study, nodded, and had Eggsy follow him down the stairs and to their rooms in the servants’ quarters, where they changed out of their livery, Harry certain to fold it neatly and leave it atop the mattresses.

“Did you find anything?” Eggsy whispered, curiosity overtaking him as he pulled his breeches up over his hips.

“Enough to know that we should not linger,” Harry replied, “else we may come across her ladyship’s new and particular friend with the iron legs.”

 

 

On Sunday after church, Eggsy, Roxy, and Harry rolled up their sleeves and began the laborious process of fetching water for their baths. Eggsy, with buckets in both hands, brought water to and from the pump, sloshing about until his trousers were soaked and his arms were straining. As he worked, Roxy lit up the stove in the kitchen and every fireplace in the house, while Harry took the buckets from Eggsy and poured their contents into steel pots. Being gentlemen both, they insisted upon allowing Roxy the first bath when enough hot water was ready to fill the tub.

The tub was a grand old Flemish thing, fox-marked all along its lower belly where it near touched the floor, but fastidiously clean inside all the same. Copper animals from children’s fables had been molded into the lip of the tub, and the first time Eggsy had bathed in it, he had taken their count: bears, swans, does, and even a necklace of bees where he had hooked his feet over the rim and wriggled the dirt out from between his toes.

Roxy was a hasty bather, unable to shake long-ago impressions from her mother about the worth of water. As she came trotting down the hall a scant few minutes later, her hair tangled wet in knots, Eggsy passed her by with several more pots of hot water. He made sure to spin his own time in the bath into an enjoyable production, rubbing some of Cook’s loamy soap into the grain of his skin, underneath his armpits, gingerly around his still-healing nose, and into his hair, singing the entire while a bawdy sailor’s song he had learned from a former fumble in the dark.

If Eggsy took his own measured time getting clean, Harry sank into the tub so deeply and for so long that Eggsy was certain he must be dead.

“What if someone has climbed through the window and accosted him?” he asked in the drawing room where he attempting to pick leaves out of J.B.’s fur. Roxy amused herself by using her kris dagger to trim her toenails while at the same time reading the issue of _The London Chronicle_ she had laid flat on the table. 

“If that were the case, I imagine we would have heard a great deal more noise,” Roxy said.

“If he is asleep, we ought to wake him before he drowns.”

“You are welcome to barge in,” Roxy said, “though you would likely receive a very large bump on the head for your efforts. Leave him be. However long the sermon this morning was, Harry will always take a Sunday bath even longer. I like to pretend that he lies in the water contemplating God.” She lifted her head. “Did you never notice before?”

“Sundays are for visiting my mother,” Eggsy shrugged, “only today she is promenading with a friend and has no time for me until three o’clock.” He looked at the mantelpiece and patted J.B.’s head. J.B. barked and slipped off his lap to go nosing for crumbs beneath the table.

“His water must be completely frigid by now. Should we not go top him up?”

“If you do, you should bring him some tea as well,” Roxy said. “It will help with his head.”

Eggsy paused. “How badly is it, truly?”

“Your tea? I would say middling to acceptable, and that with more practice you are sure to make leaps and bounds.” Roxy smiled at him with her tongue poking between her teeth, but when she saw that his question was in all truth, her face softened. “He is much improved with time, though it is not — and will never be — to a degree of his liking. Did he tell you all of this?”

“He did not tell me,” Eggsy said, “inasmuch as he swung it at me like a pall-mall ball.”

“They kept him from London for a year,” Roxy said slowly. “I do not know if he told you that. The nuns of St. Raphael the Archangel have a convalescent home in Derbyshire where they raise bees and farm honey. Kingsmen go there when they are too,” she hummed, “too broken to be Kingsmen.”

“A year?” Eggsy said, offering J.B. his foot beneath the table to chew on.

“A year and some days,” said Roxy. “I trained with Gawain while he was gone. He wrote me letters from Derbyshire every month that I gobbled up like precious sweets. Every time Gawain asked to see them I would snarl and hiss, until she told me I was the most disagreeable chit she ever had occasion to meet. Really she is just nosy!”

She waited to secure Eggsy’s agreement on the important matter of Gawain’s nosiness before continuing. “He would not have wanted me to show Gawain the letters,” she said. “I could see that he was — not well. His hand was shaky. His thoughts were at times impossible to follow. Do you know how frightening it is to receive a letter from Harry Hart that looks as if it was written by a fidgety child?” 

She brought the dagger to her toenails with frightening speed and said, “Hence when I say that he is much improved, I mean it with all true earnestness.”

“I think I should,” said Eggsy, “bring him the tea.”

“Aye,” Roxy said encouragingly.

A terrible thought teetered through his mind so that when he went to open the door, his hand slipped on the doorknob. “Do you—”

“Love him, I daresay?” Roxy said with a dab of amusement. She scooped J.B. off the floor and set him on her knees. “You of all folk should know that it is very easy to love Harry, the easiest, most natural thing in the world perhaps.” She ran a hand through her wet hair, the same hand that held the dagger, and Eggsy was not certain she was aware of what was skin and what was blade. “Loving someone does not necessitate seeing them ape-naked, mind,” she said. 

The kitchen was pleasantly overwarm when Eggsy tread in to steep a new pot of tea. Cook had left some of her biscuits from the morning in a half-closed tin, and he seized a handful to arrange on the tray with the tea. He left the tray at the water closet door, and returned in a short while with a steaming kettle. “Harry,” he called out, and then louder again, “Harry!”

He nudged open the door with one hand, the other holding the kettle carefully so that it did not graze his thigh and cause burns.

Harry groaned.

“It is intolerable that you have become such a slug-a-bed,” Eggsy informed him, stepping inside. “Or a slug-a-bath as it were. Really, Harry, take a look at at your fingers, they are as wrinkled as a whorehouse’s day-old sheets.”

He glided over to the tub, wrestled with himself to not stare at Harry’s nakedness, and won the victory by determinedly staring at Harry’s nose instead, and Harry’s drooping eyes. “What do you want?” Harry asked, voice thick and syrupy, his vowels crowded together into one long drawl. 

“‘m bringing you some tea and biscuits,” Eggsy said. “Some more water as well.” He lifted the kettle and poured directly into the bathtub, watching the steam skate across the surface as Harry’s eyes closed and he proceeded to sink even deeper into the water. “Are you feeling poorly?” Eggsy asked, wanting to hit himself for the question because the answer was all too apparent. “Is there aught else I should bring you? Should I fetch Merlin?”

“You are,” Harry slurred, “being remarkably thoughtful and attentive to the needs of others, and it is causing me no small amount of alarm.”

“Am I not allowed to do my Christian duty by the poor and downtrodden?” Eggsy grinned.

“Mmm,” said Harry. “So I must be those things then.”

Eggsy leaned over the bathtub. “Should I bring you — that is, do you want laudanum? I believe there is some in the kitchen cupboards. Cook takes it for her nerves, though she pretends not to.”

“No,” Harry said. “I had quite enough laudandum when I was with the nuns.”

“In Derbyshire. With the bees.”

“The bees,” Harry echoed, shutting his eyes. Soap residue formed spiralling white vines in the water, lapping against his chest. “The sunlight,” he said. “The gardens. The smell of the sickroom. The vigorous daily walks with Sister Mary Joseph where one collapses in pain while she simply sallies onwards. Treasured memories, all.” He opened his eyes and disturbed the water with a sluice of his hand. Even in the bath, he wore his signet ring.

Eggsy said, “No laudanum, very well. Fancy a biscuit then?”

“Actually,” Harry said, sounding surprised, “I do.”

 

 

Eggsy’s mother studied his purpling nose, the motley bruises beneath his eyes, and said, “The professional lives of secretaries must be much harder than I imagined. My darling boy, I cannot bear to see you like this.”

He stretched and placed the flat of his palm against her knee. “Did you not know? The personal secretary is the most ruthless animal in all of God’s kingdoms.”

“Oh?”

“Indeed,” he said, smiling, while his other hand reached down to rub J.B., who was curled up at his feet like a small furred valise. “There is no creature more feared.”

Michelle humoured him, though her eyes remained narrow. “More fearsome than the tigers in India?”

“Vastly more so!” Eggsy exclaimed. “For do tigers not attack only when they believe they themselves are under affront, or at threat of mortal peril? But the personal secretary is swift to strike other personal secretaries for the incorrect use of pen nibs, for wayward appellations, and for parchment that gives their employers paper cuts. The day is not yet finished until the last missive a secretary sends out is an issue to a duel.”

“Eggsy,” his mother said, “you are dissembling.”

He was, and he loved to do so. “And in a year we may only hear of a handful of English citizens mauled by Indian tigers, but do you know many people in this fair island of ours who are mauled by the scribblings of personal secretaries? Do not scoff at us, for we may damage countless lives with the single stroke of a pen.”

Michelle settled more deeply into the divan and picked up J.B. to sit beside her. J.B. barked, twitched his tail, and burrowed his nose into her lap. “You would tell me if there was anything awry,” she said. “If Hart hurt you. You would tell me without hesitation, would you not?”

“Naturally,” Eggsy lied. “But in truth this is merely the result of my attending a boxing ring on Wednesday, so you see, there is no reason to be concerned.”

“Your father was also greatly interested in boxing,” Michelle said slowly, “so perhaps I should not be surprised that you would also be keen. He came home many a times with similar bruises on his face and laughed them off just the same.”

Eggsy bit his lip. “Is that so? Do you know the name of his club?”

“No,” Michelle sighed, pausing momentarily to scold J.B. for attempting to bite her shawl. “I told him again and again that it was ridiculous, a junior tailor swinging his fists like some brute, but it did give him pleasure to go.” She smiled, thoughts tugged away by the kitestrings of a memory. “I could not deny your father any pleasure, not when he was so kind and good to me.”

“I miss him,” Eggsy confessed.

“He is with God now,” Michelle said, “along with the victims of all the tigers in India and the personal secretaries of England combined.”

“Oh, la, _very_ witty,” Eggsy said approvingly.

“How can I not help but learn some tricks from my own son?” Michelle laughed. “Or from my new friends?”

He sat closer to her on the divan, shifting J.B. aside, who scampered off and returned to the floor with a whine. “You must tell me about your new friends then,” he said, meaning it in honesty, for he did not like to think of his mother alone in the house with her cousins and no one affectionate to talk to. Michelle was solitary by nature, though he did not personally think it did her any good. 

“Is it that lady with the bonnet that reaches up to high heaven?” he asked, indicating just how high he felt the bonnet must reach. “Or it is Cousin Lydia’s new dancing master? He seemed the talkative sort when I ran into him last Sunday.”

“I do not believe you have ever met this lady,” Michelle said, “though if you were ever introduced you would struggle to forget her, for she has the most curious name and the most curious set of iron legs!”

Eggsy’s mouth dried, but Michelle went on, quite merrily. “I see by your face that you are astonished! I was too when I first met her, but really her iron legs are quite clever and sensible. She lost her actual legs during a girlhood illness; the physicians were forced to amputate, poor child.” 

“Perchance how did you meet this lady?” Eggsy asked through dry, cracked lips.

“In front of the very house!” Michelle reminisced. “I was sallying forth for a stroll when she fain stumbled into me before the door. She was extraordinarily lost, which by now does not surprise me for Gazelle does have the most atrocious sense of direction,” she chuckled. “She is a particular friend of Lady Rushton’s and is spending the season in town with her. Oh!” Michelle said, “I told her all about you, of course. Once I started, I could not stop boasting of my son making his way in the world, and in the service of a man as distinguished as Harry Hart no less.”

When Eggsy returned to Chelsea, he let precious little time lapse before accosting Harry, who, hair still wet from his bath said, “I had hoped Gazelle would not, but your fondness for your mother is no difficult secret to uncover. It does speak to how much Gazelle desires to reach you, which I had hoped was merely a passing fury but — good heavens, J.B, do not chew my Hessians!”

“Forget your Hessians!” Eggsy said, picking up a squirming J.B. “Gazelle could be at my mother’s side this very instant! It was difficult enough for me to leave her to come here. I should have sent a letter instead and stayed. No, I should return right now, in fact.”

“You would be harebrained to do so,” Harry said. “Your cousin’s’ house in Mayfair has no defense against Gazelle. If her desire was to harm your mother, in all likelihood she would have done so already. Your being there puts you directly in her trap, and although you have made great strides in your training, you are years away from being any match for Gazelle.”

“That may be so,” Eggsy hissed, “but I can hardly sit here and do nothing.”

“I was hardly proposing sitting here on our arses and doing nothing,” Harry said evenly. “I have for some time been looking for the right opportunity for Roxy to exercise her skills in disguise and observance. Gazelle has never met her and is not likely to recognize her.”

“You wish to send Roxy,” Eggsy repeated.

“Roxy has some practice with passing as a maid-of-all-work,” Harry said. “It would be a simple matter to arrange for an opening within your cousin David’s household; we shall pay off a maid if need be to feign extended illness or find a position elsewhere. Then we install Roxy in the house where she will never be more than a room away from your mother at all times. Does that meet your expectations?”

Eggsy took a breath and let it go. “Roxy is no match for Gazelle either.”

“Not yet,” Harry agreed, “but unlike you, her function is not only as a weapon; she is also a shield. She knows how to be level-headed and prioritize the protection of others, knows when to engage and when to retreat for the sake of those around her. She is, in a word, considerate.”

“If I am not _considerate_ ,” Eggsy said raggedly, “it is because you have been teaching me that way. _I_ want to be a shield. _I_ want to save people.”

“All Kingsmen do,” Harry said.

 

 

In a brief list of sights that alarmed Eggsy’s nerves, of which included overly runny eggs, opera sung by the unprofessional, and his mother’s suggestion that he pay a visit to Almack’s, he could now add: the sight of a dark-haired woman passing by Cousin David’s house. 

A woman stopped some steps in front of the door, tilted her head, and as if she knew Eggsy was watching from across the street, she smiled before continuing onwards.

“It was her,” Eggsy told Harry, fists clenching. “She wanted to be seen.”

“And if you were not there, hounding the doorstep, she would not have gotten her wish,” Harry replied. He was settled on his divan, valiantly attempting to read a leather-bound volume from his study, which, if Eggsy cocked his head to a better angle, he could see was a collection of Euripides’ plays, though he had no earthly clue who Euripides might be and why his plays should matter.

Eggsy culled the urge to smack the book from Harry’s hands. “I cannot stand it,” he said, “not even with Roxy at her side. She is _my_ mother. It is my duty to protect her.”

“Do you not think,” Harry said, barely looking up from his book, “that as your mother, she would have the same philosophy?”

“What do you mean?”

“That it is her duty to protect you,” Harry replied, “and were she to know of the truth, she would want you far away from wherever Gazelle might be, which in this case happens to be where she is. Your being hurt on her account is not, I would imagine, what she desires.”

“I don’t care what she desires, I only care that she is safe,” Eggsy snapped.

“Spoken like a child,” Harry said.

“Well then, what are the benefits of my being closeted here?” Eggsy asked, gesturing around him. “You have lived in this house for several years, and do you truly think either Gazelle or Valentine do not know that? If she wanted to find me, she could come right on over and snap my neck in the middle of eating breakfast!”

“I have no doubt that she knows you are here,” Harry replied, licking his finger to delicately turn the page, “but this house has more protections than you may be aware of, and it has me.”

“An aging, wounded Kingsman who is fortunate enough to be assigned the easiest possible missions Arthur can think of?”

Harry finally looked at him.

“That is not — not what I meant to say,” Eggsy said, words crowding around his thick, stupid tongue. “I do not know why I said that.”

“That,” Harry said, “is a weakness, for a gentleman’s thoughts and words are not meant to be thrown like a handful of salt. In this life there shall be many actions you will regret; try not to let words spoken in haste or anger be among them.” He motioned for Eggsy to sit beside him on the divan. “Here, occupy your mind a little. We can read Euripides together.”

“Was Euripides a Knight of the Round Table too?” Eggsy asked, taking the laurel gratefully. He sat down and knocked his knees against Harry’s in a friendly sort of manner, apologizing without words.

“Do you know that every time I think my head will stop hurting, you say something to open it up all over again,” Harry said, but there was amusement in his tones. “Euripides was a playwright of Ancient Greece, a tragedian. His plays were performed in the great theatres of Athens. The one I am reading right now is called Iphigenia at Aulis.”

“What a mouthful of a name,” Eggsy said.

“Some people in this world are called Iphigenia, some people are called Eggsy; what a wondrous assortment there is,” Harry said very dryly.

“Oh go on then,” Eggsy said, folding his knees up to his chest, “tell me about Iphigenia at Aulis and I shall try not to fall asleep.”

Harry hummed. “Iphigenia was the daughter of King Agamemnon, leader of the Greek forces when they fought the city of Troy to bring Helen home.”

“Helen is the beautiful one, is she not?” Eggsy said, pulling his own face into a grotesque expression, which was not overly difficult with his nose still healing and his bruises still yellowed. There was little beauty to found in _his_ face, of a certainty.

“Yes,” Harry said, “she ran off with Prince Paris of Troy, and hence the Greek forces amassed to bring her back. All of their best warriors were present — Achilles, Ajax, Odysseus, name them and they were there. But when they reached Aulis and prepared to sail across the sea, there was no wind in their ships’ sails.”

“Must have sent the army into high dudgeon,” Eggsy murmured against his knees.

“They were quite stuck in Aulis,” Harry said, “for a long length of time, and restless, bored soldiers prey heavily on any king’s mind. When King Agamemnon asked the seer Calchas what must be done, Calchas told him there was no sailing wind because the goddess Artemis was displeased with him, and to earn her favour he must offer to her the sacrifice of his eldest daughter Iphigenia.”

“Surely he didn’t,” Eggsy said. “His own daughter.”

“He did,” Harry said. “Oh, in Euripides’ play as passed down to us there is some fustian nonsense about Iphigenia being replaced at the final moment by a deer on the altar before ascending to the heavens, but I do not think that is how the story truly went, not in Euripides’ time. Whether or not Iphigenia died, the matter is: her father was prepared to sacrifice her.”

“Poor, poor Iphigenia,” Eggsy said.

“Her mother, Clytemnestra, needless to say, was furious with grief,” Harry continued. “Years later, after the Greeks were victorious at Troy and had returned to their lands with their spoils, she murdered her husband Agamemnon in the bath.”

“That you know this story,” Eggsy said, “and yet are still so fond of baths.”

“Then years later again,” Harry said with nothing more than a cutting look, “Clytemnestra's son, Orestes, murdered her to avenge his father. So you see?” He drew a circle over the page with his forefinger. “Father kills daughter, wife kills husband, son kills mother.”

“If this is the sort of material you choose to read every day,” Eggsy said, “no wonder you are so horrifically gloomy.”

“This is _classical literature_ ,” Harry said, “meant to be read for the betterment of your moral character and spiritual understanding.” Yet even as he spoke he was smiling, the corner of his mouth pulled upwards as if instead of laughing at Eggsy they were sharing in a jest, and although dead Greek playwrights were not Eggsy’s usual sort of humour, he wanted very badly to make Harry smile some more.

“Betterment of my moral character?” he grinned. “When people are going about killing each other in baths?”

“Then forget moral improvement, take it as a set of practical instructions instead,” Harry smirked. “Enemies are often vulnerable in baths. Marat for instance.”

“I don’t know who that is either,” Eggsy said cheerfully, “but if more of our combat lessons should take place in baths, then who am I to object?” He laughed out loud at that, and then realized he had not thought of his mother since nearly the very beginning of when Harry began to speak of Euripides. He ducked his head, embarrassed for some reason he could not put a name to, and then glanced up again. He did not mean for his gaze to fix onto Harry’s mouth, but Harry was still smiling at him, eyes bright and soft, and Eggsy could not find the strength to look elsewhere.

When he was smiling, Eggsy thought, Harry Hart must have the softest, most tempting mouth in London. Certainly Eggsy had seen none else to rival it, and he had kissed his fair share of soft, tempting mouths. But none who could occupy his thoughts at all hours of the day, none who could make him falter simply by standing too closely to him, or none who belonged to men who had taken him into his home when Eggsy had nothing to offer in return, and who had built for him a new life where Eggsy became someone worth noticing. Someone worth teaching, someone worth giving a legacy to, when the rest of the world would have said that Eggsy Unwin was only good for one thing: getting on his knees.

He wanted to be on his knees, this time, would give it gladly and without shame. It would be difficult to swallow down a man with his nose as sore as it was, but there were other methods. He could use the tip of his tongue instead. Thinking of it, he could feel the flush climbing up his neck. Without meaning to, without truly being cognisant of his own body’s movements, he was sitting closer to Harry on the divan, and his hand pressed softly over Harry’s, pulling the book from his grasp.

“Eggsy,” Harry said.

“Mmm?” Eggsy replied, still staring at Harry’s mouth. He let the book slide from his fingers to the ground.

“It is easy to mistake gratitude for desire,” Harry said, his voice deep and hoarse. “Are we not content the way we are? Do we not have a perfectly agreeable arrangement? You are so young and I am,” his throat worked, “I am too old and tired to have my life upended like this.”

“You aren’t an invalid, Harry,” Eggsy said tenderly, bringing his hand to tangle through Harry’s hair, wanting to see that throat all the more intimately, “and with the way you fucked me before, I am certain you will be the one upending my life. Twice a day if you have the strength for it, and I know that you do.”

“We agreed not to.”

“But—”

Harry removed Eggsy’s hand from his hair. “A gentleman’s word is his law.”

 _But it makes no sense!_ Eggsy wanted to whine, and then remembered Harry telling him not to act as a child. He drew back reluctantly, his cheeks still pink, and pressed the heel of his hand to the hardness in his breeches. He lifted his hips, hoping to flaunt to Harry what he had just denied them, but Harry was already rising to his feet and putting his book away, the softest and most tempting mouth in London turned tense and unhappy, though Eggsy did not feel his desire to bite down on it lessen in the least.

 

 

“I do actually know,” said Eggsy, “how to tell the difference between gratitude and desire, and while I did agree I would not try to tumble you into bed, I do not believe we put it into any sort of binding agreement, and _in addition_ to all that, while I did say I wanted this more than I wanted to suck your cock, I have come to see it was a rotten lie and why would it be so inconceivable that we could have both and—”

He stopped. “Harry?”

He had laid awake all night twisted up in his thoughts. When he was not thinking of his mother, he was thinking of Harry, and when he was not thinking of Harry, he was thinking of his mother. An overall confusing state of affairs, and when he woke at dawn’s light he had made two decisions: that he would strike against Gazelle before she could strike against him, for which he would need Roxy’s help, and that he would not go to his doubtlessly messy and painful death without informing Harry of the true extent of his feelings.

It was a splendid plan, at least to his sleep-starved mind, and would have worked excellently had Harry not been absent from the breakfast table. When Eggsy huffily asked Cook where Harry might be, Cook said simply, “headache,” and bid him eat more sausages before she headed off to the market.

Harry was not in his study, nor was he attempting to become a mermaid in a bath, and thus Eggsy was forced to throw open the door of the very last possibility, though he had never been afforded a glimpse of Harry’s bedchamber before. He would have thrilled at it more, and continued voicing his thoughts, if Harry had not been lying lumpen in his bed.

“Oh, your head really does hurt,” Eggsy said.

“Wonderful observation,” Harry said crossly, “now get out before I walk you out in pieces.”

“You are so very violent when you are like this,” Eggsy said. “I would say I did not like it, but I find I like nearly everything about you. Look!” he beamed. “I brought you tea.”

“Save your calf-love for another day,” Harry said. “I am in no mood to fend off your clumsy attempts at seduction, as fumbling and unattractive as they are.”

Eggsy ignored him. “Tea?”

“Did you brew it?”

“No, Cook did, though I do not recall you complaining so much the last time I brought you tea while you were in the bath.”

Harry snarled at him, and Eggsy was prompted to stop talking and bring him the tea should Harry truly do any damage to his person. Harry drank a cup of tea with three gulps, ordered Eggsy to pour him another, and drank that one too. All the while he was in his bedclothes, unshaven, sitting up against the headboard, and his hair was in such dreadful array that Eggsy longed to comb it. Instead of succumbing to the urge and having his nose broken again for the effort, he went and drew the curtains shut, plunging them into darkness and Harry’s pleased little sigh.

“You are in luck,” Eggsy said, "for I brought you not only tea, but also your favourite book of murderous plays! I thought we could read some more,” he offered, “unless you would rather go back to sleep.”

“I cannot sleep when my head is like this,” Harry said, “so you may as well bring the book over. Eggsy — don’t put your thigh so close to mine, you are as brazen as a King’s Cross whore with how badly you want it.”

“My apologies,” Eggsy said brightly, and crawled onto the bed beside Harry with a more respectable distance between their bodies. He stretched out and wriggled his toes. “I was thinking last night about our friend Euripides, you will be pleased to know.”

“Tell me what you were thinking of,” Harry said, “and then I shall decide if I was pleased.”

“My father must have done something to Gazelle for her to wish me dead,” Eggsy said. “It cannot just have been that he was a Kingsman, or she would be hunting Kingsmen every single day. No, for her to pay marked attention to myself, there must be a reason.” He turned to Harry, and saw that Harry had his eyes closed and was seemingly asleep on his pillow, until Harry gave away the pretense by answering him.

“She lost her legs in a fight against your father,” he said.

“That would do it,” Eggsy said. 

“But what has it to do with Euripides?”

“Revenge, no?” Eggsy said. “Gazelle wishes me dead for what my father did to her. I wish her dead for what she is threatening to do to my mother. Roxy wishes dead the man who killed _her_ mother. You must want Valentine dead did for what he did to _you_.” He paused. “And I suppose I never did ask how my father died, or I might want revenge against that person too. So really we are not so different from Clytemnestra and her murderous kin, are we?”

Harry opened his eyes and turned his head ever so slightly to look at Eggsy. There was a deep red crease on his stubbled cheek from the pillow, from where he must have been tossing and turning all night, neither of them sleeping well.

“A tragedian,” he said.

“Euripides must have had his reasons.”

“No,” Harry said, “I meant you.” He sat up again, blankets pooling around his waist, and beckoned haughtily with two fingers. Eggsy's blood ran hot at the sight. “Come, you must have brought something else to read. I find as I am not in the mood for your laughable advances, nor am I in the mood for Euripides. What else did you bring me?”

“A copy of _The Gentleman’s Magazine_ ,” Eggsy said, laughing, producing it for Harry’s inspection. “I even marked a page discussing the latest style of men’s cravats, solely for your edification.”

“Well then, tell me what it is they are saying about the latest style of men’s cravats,” Harry said, “and let me form my rebuttal about why they are wrong.”

“Of course. Only—”

“What is it?” Harry asked impatiently.

“‘m not a very good reader,” Eggsy said, squaring his shoulders. “Might not be what you expect.”

“Have I told you what my expectations are? I believe I have not said anything on the subject,” Harry said. “Now stop mooning about and get on with it. Oh, but before you do — for God’s sake, please put J.B. out of his misery. If he does not stop scratching pitifully at the door, he will go on to eating our shoes and destroying the furniture. He may join us if it keeps him quiet.” 

Eggsy went to the door with a smile.

 

 

He had prepared a list of reasons why it might benefit Roxy to help him in taking care of Gazelle rather than waiting for her to take care of him, and had proceeded no further than “its success would be tremendously impressive and hasten your graduation to becoming Lancelot” before she was digging into her pelisse and showing him a small green stoppered bottle. 

“I stole this from Merlin’s desk,” she said. 

“What is it?” Eggsy asked. “A cure for baldness?”

“If I stole it from Merlin’s desk, then _obviously_ it is poison,” Roxy said, “or do you never pay any attention during his lessons? No wonder you always score so poorly on poisons!” She shook the bottle in his face. “This particular beauty is absorbed through the skin and can immobilize your limbs for up to three hours. He calls it his Verona elixir. Some Romeo and Juliet reason, I believe. I don’t know — I was not much paying attention at that point either.”

What he loved best about Roxy was that he no longer questioned her ways of thinking; he had grown to have deep familiarity with the thoughts that coursed through her mind as she showed him the poison, and she could see the same of him as well. 

“I returned to Anders House,” he said, “and talked to some of the footmen. Lady Rushton is holding another fete tonight for some of her closest friends. Gazelle will be in attendance.”

“You will not be able to pass as staff, not when you and Harry vanished on the household before,” Roxy said thoughtfully, “but I can masquerade as a maid. I am becoming quite good at that, you know, and my cousin at Anders House will corroborate my story.” She paused. “But one thing: Gazelle has seen me as a maid at your mother’s side. She might well grow suspicious were she to see me at Lady Rushton’s as well.”

“Can your cousin be your arms and legs?” Eggsy said. “If you stayed downstairs and gave her instructions, would she be able to bring the poison to Gazelle?”

“Even better. Jane may be able to divine what the seating arrangements will be,” Roxy said, “and then we may simply coat Gazelle’s soup spoon beforehand.”

Eggsy finished her thought. “Then when the poison has rendered Gazelle immobile, Jane can alert you, and you can give me the signal, and together we can contrive to remove her from the party. Only are you sure we should not simply, ah, kill her once we have the chance?” He tried not to wince as he said it, for while he was not opposed philosophically to killing his enemies, he had never had the occasion yet to do so and might need some time to steel himself to the act.

“Never kill someone when you can wheedle vital information out of them instead,” Roxy said in such specific pitch and tone that he knew she was imitating Harry. “No, we shall throw her into a hack and bring her back to Harry’s. He will know what to do with her then.”

“If he does not flog the both of us for going against his orders,” Eggsy said.

“He is too fond of me and too besotted with _you_ to do anything of the like,” Roxy said. “Now what if the poison acts too swiftly and Gazelle falls over in the midst of dinner? It would be very tricky for us to spirit her body away with all the guests in the room.”

“We shall have to think quickly if that happens,” Eggsy said. “Now what if Jane gets cold feet and decides it is not in her best interest to help us? What if she marches straight to Lady Rushton and tells her of our plans?”

“We shall have to think quickly if that happens,” Roxy said, and they grinned at each other. 

“What if,” she said, “the poison does not work as well as Merlin thinks, and Gazelle only goes partly frozen, but not so frozen that she could not kick our heads in like an angry horse?”

“Think quickly!” Eggsy said. “What if she does see you, realizes that you must be a Kingsman guarding my mother and that tonight you are not at your post, and sends someone to Mayfair before either of us can hurry back?”

“Think quickly!” Roxy said, swaying forward to clasp his hand. “But that will not happen. I have already asked Tristan-in-waiting to keep an eye on your mother tonight.”

“Kingsmen,” he whispered.

“Kingsmen,” she said solemnly, and then barked out in rough laughter. “Lud, but this will be _fun!_ ”

It was like being drunk, Eggsy thought; the excitement of the evening ahead was the same slow, whirling sensation he had after drinking one too many bottles of madeira. His head knew what the risks were, that there were nearly too many to take, but his body was flushed with blood and nerves, and he laughed too often and too loudly as he and Roxy met with Jane in the alleyway to give instruction. Jane was a shy, mousy woman, and he saw no particular family resemblance to Roxy, until she tilted her chin and the sunlight caught her eyes with a peculiar slyness, and then Eggsy retracted his previous thought.

“She does not know about Kingsmen, not truly,” Roxy told Eggsy after Jane had wiped her hands on her apron and returned inside, “but she knows that my mother was murdered, that I am on the hunt, and that there are some very strange going-ons with Lady Rushton and her friend Gazelle. She is so close to the truth, any day she will stumble over it like a misshapen rug.”

“She may need to find new employment after tonight,” Eggsy said. “Even if all goes well. There may be too much suspicion over her head.”

“Of course!” Roxy scoffed. “I have already spoken to Gawain. She needs so many servants to keep that giant estate of hers afloat, what harm is one more?”

Two hours before Lady Rushton’s fete began, Jane was bringing Roxy a set of Anders House livery for her to change into. Jane made Eggsy look away and then held up a blanket so that Roxy could disrobe in privacy in the alley behind the house. When Roxy was finished she adjusted her cap and bobbed a practice courtesy, catching Eggsy’s eye but turning away before they could both start giggling. 

She dropped the bottle of poison carefully into her apron and said, “When we are ready for you to help with Gazelle, I will appear in that window straight above us,” she pointed, “and call for you.”

“No secret code? No false names?” he said, heart bobbing in his chest.

“‘Oi, you!’ should be sufficient,” Roxy said.

One hour before Lady Rushton’s fete began, Eggsy climbed the roof of the house beside Lady Rushton’s and found a vantage point where he was not likely to be noticed, but where he could see the people going in and out of Anders House, bringing freshly cut flowers and fine silken tablecloths and a centerpiece of silver and moss, where metallic fish swam from the spout of a bubbling fountain. 

He saw Roxy’s face after a little while, caught it through the frame of a window, and then more fully as she leaned out and gave him a discreet wave. “Almost,” she mouthed.

Eggsy took care to reaffirm his hands with the weapons he had brought, just in case: a revolver, two blades, and a garotte that he had not much practice with, but which Roxy had assured him she could use quite readily. Roxy’s own weapons were in a bundle beside his feet; he would bring them to her when they were ready.

When the fete began, which it did at seven o’clock, he saw the guests arrive as their carriages pulled up to the front of the house. He made a game of it as he often did, putting names to faces, only he put a great deal more effort tonight than his jaunt in Hyde Park. If Lady Rushton was connected to Richmond Valentine, then many of her friends may well be too, and if he could report back accurately to the Kingsmen, then Harry might be proud and Arthur might — well, Arthur might be willing to make a decision, finally, on whether or not Eggsy was permitted to be one of them.

Gazelle’s barouche was the second to last to arrive, and she employed no driver, no footman; she drove it herself, and leaped down smoothly after pulling to a halt, handing the reins over to one of Lady Rushton’s stablehands.

Eggsy took several deep breaths to regulate himself. 

It was fiendish torture, to wait outside when Gazelle disappeared within Anders House and he could not see what she was doing, or know how well the plan was proceeding. Eggsy slipped off the roof and landed in the alley, where he would be in position to act on Roxy’s signal when she gave it, but it proved to be a long, protracted period of restless fidgeting. His skin was cold with his sweat while his eyes were scratchy and hot with how hard he was trying not to blink lest he miss the sign. He wondered how Roxy had withstood it, guarding his mother when she did not know if anything would happen at all, or if it did, what form it would take.

In the end, it was not Roxy’s “oi, you” that spurred him into movement. It was not her face silhouetted by candlelight from a second story window. It was, rather, a sound from that window that caught Eggsy’s attention, a sound of a woman crying out, followed by the unmistakable firing of a revolver. Eggsy did not wait to think. He grabbed his weapons and Roxy’s, and threw himself against the side of Anders House, starting to climb.

He somersaulted through the open window in time to see the following tableau: Gazelle lying on the ground, Jane pressed to the armoire with her hands over her nose, Roxy with a bullet’s gaze on her cheek, and a man with a revolver who matched every description of Richmond Valentine that Eggsy had ever been told.

“Oh, who’s this then?” Valentine asked pleasantly, waving his revolver at Eggsy. “I had thought to leave the party to take a piss, but lo and behold, what should I see but two maids struggling with my poor Gazelle. So I may have left the party but clearly the party has followed me!”

Eggsy looked at Gazelle. “Is she—?”

“Yes,” Roxy said, “ _finally_ , I had to gag her first so she would not bring down the house. But then _he_ saw us,” she shrugged. 

It was an awfully cavalier shrug to indicate a man who had them at gunpoint. But that was not true either, Eggsy thought. Roxy was by the door, Eggsy was by the window, and if Valentine wished to shoot them, he could only shoot one of them at a time unless he was possessed of a speed that Eggsy had only ever really seen in Harry. He met Roxy’s eyes and knew once again that they shared the same thought. Good old Kingsman training, he thought fondly, while his pulse raced in his throat and he croaked, “Well, Valentine, good for you, but what will you do with us now?”

Valentine looked at him, and Eggsy and Roxy moved at the same time. In a very distant part of his mind he heard a bullet go off again, heard Jane scream, but there was no time to take stock of their losses. He ran straight for Valentine, barrelling into him as the revolver went off a second time and pain burst like a hanging garden through his shoulder. But only a graze, Eggsy told himself, only a graze, and he was wrestling Valentine to the floor while Roxy sat on Valentine’s chest and grabbed the revolver from his clenched fist.

“Help!” Valentine shouted. “Thieves are upon me!”

As they struggled with him, footsteps pounded down the hallway, and the door was thrown open. Several footmen and the steward stood behind it, mouths agape when they saw what was going on. A woman’s voice followed him, high and imperious, and Lady Rushton swanned into the room only to shout, “Quick! Fetch a Bow Street Runner! And stop these thieves from leaving!”

Three of the biggest footmen swarmed into the room and grabbed Eggsy and Roxy by the arms. Eggsy went wild, kicking and scratching and kicking as many balls as he could. On his side Roxy had grabbed hold of her weapons and was using her garotte, snarling with her maid’s cap gone and her hair falling wildly around her shoulders. 

There were too many footmen, Eggsy realized with despair. He and Roxy might have the benefit of extensive training, or rather Roxy more extensively than he at any rate, but they had never fought this many opponents at one time, and he did not know how to do it. Roxy had dropped Valentine’s pistol when one of the footman grabbed her arm, and Valentine lunged for it, picking it up with a triumphant shout of “aha!”

When suddenly there was another little flurry of chaos, and the man who had Eggsy pinned to the ground on all fours was thrown off, and there, like a furious seraph, like an avenging prince, like every good thing Eggsy had ever prayed for while down on his knees, was Harry, flanked by Gawain and Arthur. 

What happened next he was not entirely certain of, and would remember afterwards only in pieces. But it would be a story Kingsmen-in-waiting would whisper to each other in awe for years to come, he was sure, turning to him to ask _was it true, were you really there?_ and Eggsy would smile at them benevolently and say _yes_. 

He was there when Gawain disarmed Valentine. He was there when Harry and Arthur threw back the three footmen. He was there when Valentine slipped from Gawain’s grasp, but then Harry turned and knocked him out with a single blow, tossing him over his shoulder, while Gawain did the same for Lady Rushton, and Arthur Gazelle. Roxy wrapped a hand tenderly around Jane’s wrist and helped her to her feet. There were now so many people in this bedchamber that Eggsy wondered if they should charge admission and make a fortune that way.

“Time to go, if no one is opposed,” Harry said, and none of the servants crowding the doorway made any further effort to stop them from leaving.

“How did they know to come?” Eggsy hissed to Roxy as they brought up the line. 

“I did tell Gawain about Jane,” Roxy whispered back. “I suppose she must have figured out what we were up to and told Harry.” They watched as, in passing through the dining room, Gawain stole a dinner roll and popped it into her mouth. Lady Rushton woke up and began shrieking over her shoulder. She patted her ladyship’s arse with butter-smeared fingers. The remaining guests of the fete reared back in fright, and recoiled again when Harry smiled at them, polite and gentlemanly and perfectly vicious.

“I think, overall, I am very glad I did so,” Roxy said.

“I think so too,” said Eggsy.

 

 

Arthur and Gawain took charge of their prisoners and made arrangements for them to be taken to a safehouse for further questioning before the poison wore out on Gazelle. “We may have the more enviable task tonight,” Gawain said to Harry, “as in we do not have to reprimand those two.” 

She cast Eggsy and Roxy a meaningful look, which was only slightly compromised by her delighted chuckle. Arthur said little in comparison, and Eggsy made himself gather enough courage to meet his eyes, wondering if all his chances were now ruined. He could not find an answer in Arthur’s gently lined face, save that Arthur turned to Harry and said,

“Valentine will have his justice. I promise you that.”

Harry nodded tightly.

When the other Kingsmen were gone, and the three of them had returned home, Harry examined the graze on Roxy’s cheek until she pushed him off and said, “It hardly even hurts! I am fine!”

“I am prouder of you,” Harry said, “than words can say.”

She turned red more swiftly than Eggsy had ever seen before. Eggsy bit his cheek to keep from beaming in relief — Harry was not angry at them, after all, Harry was pleased. He tucked his hands behind his back, trying not to rock on his heels while waiting impatiently for his own praise, but when Harry was finished embracing Roxy he walked straight past Eggsy into his study without giving him a single word.

“Oh, um,” Eggsy said.

“He is furious with you,” Roxy offered helpfully.

Eggsy simmered on that thought all night, and by morning he had decided that he would not let Harry see that he had hurt him with his indifference. It was because of _his_ initiative that Valentine and Gazelle were in custody. He and his mother were safe, and he had every reason to celebrate. So what need did he have, after all, to grovel at Harry’s feet? None whatsoever, he thought angrily, sauntering into the drawing room the very next morning without a care in the world.

Harry was ready for him. Harry had evidently not slept at all that night, judging by the heavy bags beneath his eyes and the crotchety way he was clutching his butter knife. 

Eggsy threw him a brilliant smile and took his seat on the other end of the table. “Where’s Roxy?” he asked, reaching for his favourite plate of Cook’s herring.

“Arthur called for her this morning,” Harry said, very coldly and slowly. “I believe he means to make her Lancelot after her showing last night.”

A piece of herring lodged itself in Eggsy’s throat and he embarrassed himself by choking on it. “Good for her!” he said loudly, once he had smacked himself on the chest a few times while burning at the sight of Harry’s singled arched eyebrow. “Mayhap Arthur will come calling for me later.”

“Do you think so?” Harry asked mildly.

Two minutes. Eggsy had managed to maintain his smiling cock-of-the-walk pretense for two minutes. “Oh for God’s sake!” he cried, dropping it like one of J.B.’s leavings underneath the table. “Can you not, even for a single moment, dredge up enough sentiment in your puny little soul to be happy for me?”

“Happy?” Harry retorted. “When you go haring about nearly getting yourself killed, and dragging one of our best agents into your schemes? What, pray tell, should I be happy about the prospect of being called to Anders House and finding you _dead_?”

“I was not dead!” Eggsy said. “In fact, we were managing quite well until you came along. We had a _plan_ —”

“If your plan was to be overcome by Lady Rushton’s entire household, then yes, I daresay your plan was in excellent effect!” 

Eggsy pushed his chair back, listening to the harsh scrape of its legs on the floor. “If you must insist on being angry, then by all means be angry. But at least _pretend_ to be fair about it. You told Roxy you were proud and then with the same mouth you upbraid me? What is so different between what Roxy did and what I did?”

“Roxy can take care of herself, but you I almost lost!” 

“I — you —” Eggsy sputtered, his mind spinning like a compass needle in a thousand directions at once. “You did not even come close to losing me. This,” he pointed at the bandage on his chest where the bullet had grazed him, “this was just a skin wound, turns out Valentine is not much of a gunman at all.”

But Harry was breathing hard, pushing air through his flared nostrils as he stood up and stalked over to Eggsy’s side of the table. Eggsy watched him, wide-eyed, as he approached. “When we opened that door,” he said. “you were underneath that footman, unmoving, with blood welling through your shirt, and I thought — God help me, Eggsy, I thought that you were dead.”

“‘m not,” Eggsy said.

Harry stopped in front of him, still breathing shallowly, and everything changed.

“Please,” Eggsy said, “please, _please_ , Harry, kiss me. Just this once. So I know that you care. Please, _please_.” He closed his eyes so that he could not shame himself further, and heard a wet gasp — his own, he realized, his own — when Harry tilted his chin up and kissed him, hard.

“How can I deny you,” Harry said between rough, deep kisses, “when you beg so sweetly?”

“Please,” Eggsy moaned, and clutched Harry’s broad shoulders until his knuckles bled white. Harry bent over him to pull his lip between his teeth, biting gently and then forgetting gentleness by the wayside as he pulled Eggsy to his feet and pinned him against the table. Eggsy gasped as Harry forced his body backwards, until he was lying half on the table and half dangling off it, with Harry’s thigh slotting between his and starting a slow, sweet grind against Eggsy’s hardening prick.

Harry lifted a hand to rest on Eggsy's flushed cheek, and Eggsy wanted to kiss every broad, rough knuckle, and run his tongue over the cold curve of every ring. He might have done this, had Harry not dropped his hand to his mouth and pried open Eggsy’s lips, and Eggsy gratefully began to suck Harry’s fingers instead, tasting salt, sweat, and the honey from his tea. Harry let his fingers rest against Eggsy’s mouth, against Eggsy’s desperately questing tongue, casually, while his knee continued to work Eggsy’s groin with deep strokes.

When Eggsy was close to choking himself on Harry’s fingers, chasing after them and craning his neck off the table to follow Harry’s fingers as he withdrew, Harry seemed to decide his mouth was suited to better purposes. He returned to kissing Eggsy, giving him his tongue to suck on instead, and Eggsy babbled with heartfelt appreciation, gasping and panting as Harry wrapped his fingers around Eggsy’s wrists instead, pinning him to the table.

“Does it hurt?” Harry asked.

“Hurt? I — what do you mean?” Eggsy asked, hardly able to think. Any moment where Harry was not kissing him was a loss that could not be borne, and he tilted his chin up to tempt Harry back into it, save that Harry took one hand from his wrist and touched his hip, thumbing it with arrogant tenderness as he waited for Eggsy’s reply.

It did hurt. His nose was still not wholly healed, and ached when Harry bumped it during their kisses. His chest burst into small pinwheels of pain when he tried to arch after Harry. There were other scrapes and bruises as well from last night’s events, and Eggsy could not remember why they mattered, or why Harry would think them impediment to stop.

“It hurts,” Eggsy panted into Harry’s mouth as Harry offered it to him, just barely, and Eggsy groaned with frustration when Harry’s hands tightened on his wrists so that he could not simply lean up and take what was offered. “It hurts and I don’t care. ‘m supposed to want to be a Kingsman, aren’t I?”

“This,” Harry said darkly, biting his ear, “is worlds away from being Kingsman business. Or do you think that this is a gentleman who would want to do this to you?” He cupped Eggsy’s cock through his breeches, and Eggsy whined. Harry’s hand was so large and so warm, and his thumb stroked Eggsy through his trousers until he had leaked a sizable spot, squirming and hissing as Harry continued to coax more from him.

His injuries may have hurt, but what Harry was wringing from him was more than pain; it was a deep, snarling animal that lived within him, a pleasure so lush that if the priest at Sunday mass asked him if it was from God or the Devil, Eggsy would not know the answer, only that it seemed to come from some place in his body that was beyond either, a garden of desire as it pooled in his cock and bowed open his hips.

He did not want to climax in his breeches, wanted to show Harry that he was capable of more than that, but it seemed impossible to stave it off. Not when Harry was grinding against him and kissing him and raking a hand through Eggsy’s hair so that his signet ring caught on one of Eggsy’s tresses, caught and tangled, and Harry responded by _yanking_.

A groan bubbled from Eggsy’s mouth that was not quite human.

“You are close, aren’t you?” Harry whispered into his mouth as Eggsy’s hips jerked and jerked in his hand. “I want you to suck me first.”

He pulled away, his hand disappearing to his side, and Eggsy blinked in bemusement until he saw that Harry had seated himself in Eggsy’s empty chair and was flicking open the first few buttons of his trousers — plain, loose trousers, not his usual tight calfskin breeches, as if he had woken up this morning dressed to undress. Eggsy groaned and fell to his knees before him, knocking Harry’s hands away and replacing them with his own hands. Harry groaned, tilting his head back and baring his throat, as Eggsy pressed his thumb against the wet slit of his cock, watching Harry flex open and pearl.

“Has Cook gone to the market already?” Harry bit out, clutching the arms of the chair.

“Yes,” Eggsy breathed.

“Good,” Harry said with lazy eyes, “then there will be no one to hear your cries.” He carded his fingers through Eggsy’s hair and brought his face closer to his cock. Eggsy’s eyes watered with how hungry he was for it, and even before Harry could seal Eggsy’s mouth over his prick, Eggsy was already lapping at him with soft kittenish kisses. Harry moaned loudly.

“Thought _I_ was the one meant to be loud,” Eggsy smirked. Harry punished him with a sharp lurch of his hips, pushing his cock into Eggsy’s mouth until Eggsy too was groaning, struggling not to choke on Harry’s fat, wide girth, struggling not to inhale every part of him down into Eggsy’s bones. 

For all of his savage words, Harry was gentle. He was mindful of Eggsy’s injuries and did not make Eggsy take the full length of him where Eggsy’s nose would be forced to press against the root of Harry’s cock. Next time, Eggsy thought to himself, allowing himself to imagine a future where it would be easy to do this again, because Harry deserved all the pleasure that Eggsy could afford him, as if all the long years of Eggsy doing this for strange men in the dark had been preparation and learnings for this, for Harry’s cock resting hot against his greedy tongue.

He sucked down Harry’s cock as deeply as he was able to, and hollowed his cheeks as he worked, while his right hand moved to press beneath Harry’s balls, stroking him lovingly until Harry’s moans grew quicker in cadence and earnestness. 

“You will let me fuck you, won’t you?” Harry said. “Let me shove my hard cock into that luscious arse of yours and ride you until you scream.”

Eggsy nodded yes, yes, yes, too tongue-tied to speak.

“Get up on the table,” Harry ordered, and Eggsy nearly tripped over himself in his haste to obey. He shoved the plates and remains of his breakfast aside and hopped onto the table, while Harry gifted him with long, open-mouthed kisses until Eggsy had melted beneath him. 

“Lift your hips,” Harry said, and he helped Eggsy wriggle out of his breeches, though it was slow work and Eggsy keened in frustration. “Careful,” Harry warned him, “these are too fine to rip.” He fondled Eggsy as he went, offered him a taste with his fingers of what his huge cock could do.

When the breeches and smallclothes were on the ground, Harry bent Eggsy’s right leg over his shoulder. Eggsy, who had lifted himself onto his elbows to watch, fell backwards and groaned as he stretched his thighs as widely as he could to accommodate the broadness of Harry’s shoulders. Harry hummed in approval, running a hand through Eggsy’s hair and murmuring, “yes, like this, sweet boy, you are doing so well.”

His other hand pressed a thick oil between Eggsy’s legs, and Eggsy did not have the wherewithal to ask where the oil had come from, or wonder at how quickly Harry had been able to obtain it. He did not have the wherewithal to do much but cry out when Harry circled his arsehole with his slick fingers, taunting him until Eggsy’s hips shook with want.

The press of one finger was a burn; a second was a struggle, and a third, as Eggsy’s hips melted open like butter and he chewed his lip until it bled, was a marvel. 

“Please,” Eggsy panted, grabbing onto Harry’s arm, terrified that he would change his mind, “please, more.”

Harry halted his pleas by kissing him, licking into Eggsy’s mouth as he finger-fucked him leisurely, three large fingers spreading Eggsy open, soon joined by a fourth. Eggsy trembled and mewled into Harry’s mouth, until Harry stopped briefly and used his free hand to caress Eggsy’s cheek, murmuring, “Beautiful, beautiful boy, do you know how hard it has been to resist you?”

“I do not want to be resisted,” Eggsy managed. “I want to be _fucked_.”

“Patience,” Harry said, and he toyed with Eggsy’s hole for a long, long time, what felt like hours, until Eggsy was hoarse from shouting and would have climaxed twice already had not Harry kept such a firm grip around the base of his cock.

“That is for me,” Harry hissed, and Eggsy nodded weakly, offering Harry another kiss, his toes curling as he arched his back off the table with a particularly clever twist of Harry’s fingers. When his head had floated back to the earth, he saw Harry remove his fingers from Eggsy’s arse and align his hips instead. Eggsy moaned gratefully as he felt the press of Harry’s cock at his fluttering, hungry hole, and his moan drew out into a series of even longer, deeper sounds as Harry finally pushed in.

“You are even tighter than you were the last time,” Harry said, seemingly struck by wonder as well, and the rough scrape of his voice was too much in accompaniment with the slow circling of his hips. Eggsy had been kept at the edge for too long and too well, and the moment Harry stopped being slow and careful, and starting thrusting with greater strength, it was more than Eggsy could bear. He climaxed, sobbing, knees knocking into the sides of Harry’s belly as he spurted hot seed between them, until Harry’s chest hair dripped wet and glistening with Eggsy’s slick.

“So fucking beautiful,” Harry said between gritted teeth, and fucked into Eggsy even harder. Eggsy wrapped his legs around Harry’s back and held onto him, burying his face in Harry’s shoulder so that Harry could not see how his lashes were damp with pleasure, how lost Eggsy was to it. Being fucked after he had already come was a tightwire sensation, rough and on the right edge of painful, Eggsy’s hole flexing weakly every time Harry plunged in.

Harry reached down to touch where they were joined. He placed his thumb and forefinger around where his cock was pistoning into Eggsy’s soft pink hole, and Eggsy groaned at how easily Harry held him open, with his fingers and with his cock. He felt his own cock stirring in eagerness again, and Harry laughed when he saw it too, said something about the privileges of youth. He started tugging at Eggsy then, and Eggsy bit Harry’s clavicle with how good it felt.

Harry had fucked Eggsy for so long by now that Eggsy felt himself starting to go dry, but Harry coated his fingers with Eggsy’s release and wormed those fingers back into him, exploring his abused hole and slicking him up until Eggsy was begging for his cock once more. Harry gave it to him with a deep, satisfied groan, seating himself inside Eggsy before continuing to enjoy his ride. He settled into a rhythm of strong, firm thrusts that had Eggsy writhing and begging for faster.

“I shall give you faster when I am good and ready,” Harry said, spreading Eggsy’s cheeks and using his strength to lift Eggsy’s hips off the table. 

“There is a spot inside me,” Eggsy croaked, “where—”

“Is it here?” Harry asked.

“No,” Eggsy whined.

“Oh? Is it here?” Harry asked, teasing him with a particularly brutal thrust that made Eggsy shake.

“Close,” Eggsy gasped.

“Well, I am plain out of ideas then,” Harry said, and Eggsy wanted to punch him in the face because Harry knew _full well_ where the spot was, Harry had aimed for it before, that night they first met. He snarled and tugged at Harry’s hair, spitting obscenities and threats into Harry’s ear. 

Harry laughed all the more before finally taking pity on Eggsy and fucking him right where he wanted, firm and strong giving way to brutal and fast, until Eggsy worried the table would collapse beneath them and how would they explain that to Cook. Only then Harry hoisted both of Eggsy’s legs over his shoulders and Eggsy stopped thinking of Cook entirely.

Harry had Eggsy bent over in half, crammed between Harry’s cock and the table, keening with such a pitch that he could hear J.B. barking at the door. “Oh God, oh God, oh God,” Eggsy chanted as Harry pushed his thighs up as far as they could go and fucked him so wildly that Eggsy lost his voice shouting as he climaxed. Harry followed not far behind him; with a snarl and a snap of his hips he had Eggsy pinned helpless to the table as his cock swelled and jerked inside Eggsy, filling him with wet.

“I love you,” Eggsy blurted out when he had regained some semblance of thought. Or perhaps he had not regained as much as he had hoped, for it slipped out of his mouth without his meaning to say it. He pressed the flat of his palm over his stinging eyes. “You do not have to feel the same. I know that you — you very likely do not.”

“Eggsy,” Harry said quietly.

“Only that this is not a roll in the hay for me,” Eggsy said. “You are far too — far too complicated to be a roll in the hay.” He tried to stand up but his knees were still too watery from the fucking, and he clutched the edge of the table to keep from falling.

“Eggsy,” Harry said again, as if by saying his name repeatedly he could convey some deep and secretive message. However, before Eggsy could puzzle out what he meant by it, Harry hoisted him into his arms as if he weighed no more than a sack of flour, and with Eggsy shrieking in surprise and hitting him in the shoulder, he carried him to bed.

 

 

He left the house next day to visit his mother, walking smiling and bow-legged and thinking of Harry still in bed, until a shadow detached itself from the side of the street and fell into step beside him.

“Percival,” said Arthur, and Eggsy fumbled to a stop.

“That was your father’s mantle, when he was among us,” Arthur said, walking on at a stately pace. Eggsy swiftly caught up to him. “It has been held by others since his death, but tragedies fell upon them as well, as is the nature of our work. There is no one right now to claim that name.”

“I want,” Eggsy began.

“Wanting has aught to do with it, my boy,” Arthur said. “You shall have to _work_. You shall have to work hard every day of your life, and a shortened life that may be too with the way you and Lancelot went racing into the first sign of trouble.”

“We delivered you Valentine and Gazelle,” Eggsy said stubbornly.

“That you did,” Arthur said. “Now come walk with me, and be sure to bring your umbrella, Percival-in-waiting. I believe it is about to rain.”

It continued to rain, hours later, when Eggsy returned to the house and shook his umbrella free of water. He placed it carefully in the stand by the door and toed off his boots until he slid across the floor in his stockings, making no noise as he walked towards Harry’s study. He could hear Cook humming a ditty in the kitchen, and could hear Roxy sharpening her knives in the weapons room. He could hear his own breath, opening and closing his lungs like a blacksmith’s bellows, as he opened the study door.

Harry’s correspondence lay in forgotten swathes across his desk. Harry had his head in his hands and he was staring at his Kingsman-engraved watch before him.

“I had a long walk with Arthur this afternoon,” Eggsy announced. “Did you know?” He thought of how Harry had reached for him in bed that morning, fingers curling over Eggsy’s bare thigh, telling him to be careful.

“Percival-in-waiting,” Harry said. “How apropos. Lee would have been pleased.” He lifted his head from his hands, and Eggsy was not quite certain, but he thought he saw a shadow of something play over Harry’s face before it disappeared and Harry said, briskly, “We shall have to create a new training regime for you. It is one thing to learn some tricks for defense, it is another to be a Kingsman-in-waiting and carry the lily-and-rose coin in truth.”

“Harry—”

“I hope that Arthur stressed the amount of labour it will take, and the many years. I fear that your run-ins have given you rather the wrong idea about everything,” said Harry. “If you hope to be even a fraction of—”

“Harry.”

“—and we cannot repeat our lapses of yesterday and this morning,” Harry said. “No matter if you think you harbour some misguided sentiment towards me.” He busied himself with tidying up his letters. “I have seen enough Kingsmen ruined when they make the poor choice of falling in love with their pupils.”

“Harry,” Eggsy said, “you are not my teacher.”

“You may do well to discover some gratitude,” Harry said, eyes narrowed, “or did you learn how to scale buildings and topple gunmen on your own then?”

“I mean to say,” Eggsy said, more slowly, “that Arthur does not think it beneficial to have the two of us paired together throughout the entire length of my education, and has seen fit to give me to Gawain instead.”

“Gawain,” Harry said.

“Seems so.”

Harry turned his head away to look out the window, and Eggsy admired the tight clench of his jaw and how it threw Harry’s cheekbones into stark relief. “So you see,” Eggsy said, growing less sure when Harry did not say anything, “there is no harm in us continuing our… lapses. They would not be lapses, not if you had no responsibility over me. I could live with Gawain—” Harry snorted, and Eggsy ploughed on, “—and I could come visit you when I have the chance, and perhaps some will say that I only became a Kingsman because I sucked your prick, but it would not harm me, not truly, and I will prove myself to everyone who dares question it.”

“You are babbling, Eggsy,” Harry said. “In a manner unbecoming of a gentleman.”

Eggsy stopped.

“When I went to that molly-house in Moorfields that night,” Harry said, looking at him, “my intention was as it has always been: to find company for a single night, some willing body for me to dip my cock into. I have little space in my life for attachments, and I find that completing my missions and making sure Roxy does not blow herself up occupies most of it.”

A heavy weight settled over Eggsy’s ribcage, a fist that pushed down until it was difficult to breathe. “Oh,” he said.

“I do not make myself an easy man to love,” Harry remarked. “I am fastidious about my habits, I am preoccupied with business, and I live in pain, which oft makes me more irritable than I care to be, even to those who do not deserve it.”

“On the contrary,” Eggsy said quietly, “I have always found you very easy to love.”

“I wish that you did not,” Harry said roughly, and Eggsy finally understood the secret shadow that had passed over Harry’s face when he first came in, because when Harry looked at him next there was fear there. Harry who had lost so much when that bullet went through his head, and why had Eggsy never realized before now that it was he who must be forward-thinking enough for the both of them.

He calculated his next move, knowing that it must be the right one or Harry would continue to find reasons to grow cold. He grinned and perched himself onto Harry’s desk, winding a finger through Harry’s tousled hair, running it over Harry’s unshaven cheek. “It is well and good that you are not my teacher then,” he said, “and thereby have no power to tell me what to do.”

Harry groaned, and Eggsy laughed, bright and wild, pushing his face into Harry’s to demand a kiss. He waited there patiently, for suddenly Eggsy had all the patience in the world to spool out, until Harry groaned again and kissed him back, cupping Eggsy’s jaw and peppering it with sweet, angry kisses until Eggsy was half sprawled across the desk and panting.

“As I said,” Harry growled, closing his eyes, “you are terribly difficult to resist.”

Eggsy smiled against his mouth.

“Do you like that, then, sweet thing?” Harry murmured, giving him one last kiss before standing up and coming round the desk. Eggsy spread his knees helpfully, but Harry ignored him and strode straight to the door, which he held open expectantly. “Gawain must be waiting for you to report to her at this very moment,” Harry said, smirking. “It is rude to keep a lady guessing.”

“But—”

“Come then, Percival-in-waiting,” Harry drawled, “the hard work begins now.”

 

 

 

Epilogue, some years later:

 

_Dear Roxy,_

_I hope this letter finds you in good health. More to the point, I hope this letter finds you at all, for it is markedly difficult to locate you when you are gallivanting across the world. But Lancelot does as Lancelot must! Congratulations on your rescue of the town/the priceless jewel/the entirety of western civilization, whichever answer may most recently apply, I am never quite certain._

_As for myself, I cannot claim my exploits are as grand as yours, and it has only been with great reluctance that Arthur has let me graduate at all. In a few days he will send me to Inverness. I look forward to making a better acquaintance with the sheep there._

_You may be wondering why this letter is so neat and legible, and I must confess that I have, of late, hired a personal secretary. His name is Harry. You may have heard of him. He is a tyrant with a pen. I am currently dictating this letter to him while languishing on the grounds of a Derbyshire abbey, watching the nuns tromp through fields of bees. I have already been stung five times, but Harry not even once, much to my dismay._

_It was his idea, before I go to Inverness, that the two of us take a bit of a country trip, as we are growing dull and old in London, and Cook has been complaining of how we are dirtying her linens with our unsavory business. I proposed the lake district with its beautiful trees and good hunting. Harry prefers the bees._

_It is a good thing that, all in all, I prefer Harry, who, though he does not say it, adores me madly, and I shall make sure he includes that in the letter before we send it out. I did hear a little birdie say that you might be in Inverness as well. If so, we must catch up and go on another mission together. If Arthur so approves in all his might and wisdom, etcetera._

_Damnation, a bee has stung me again._

_Harry urges you to continue practicing your ciphers, and will no doubt translate this entire letter into one. Well, he is maddening but he sends his love, as do I._

_Yours,  
Eggsy Unwin (Percival)_

  
  
  
  



End file.
